Abstract
The cryogenic buffer gas beam (CBGB) is an important tool in the study of cold and ultracold molecules. While there are known techniques to enhance desired beam properties, such as high flux, low velocity, or reduced divergence, they have generally not undergone detailed numerical optimization. Numerical simulation of buffer gas beams is challenging, as the relevant dynamics occur in regions where the density varies by orders of magnitude, rendering standard numerical methods unreliable or intractable. Here, we present a hybrid approach to simulating CBGBs that combines gas dynamics methods with particle tracing. The simulations capture important properties such as velocities and divergence across an assortment of designs, including two-stage slowing cells and de Laval nozzles. This approach should therefore be a useful tool for optimizing CBGB designs across a wide range of applications.
Highlights
There is considerable interest in physics with cold molecules because of their applications in a wide variety of areas, including quantum computing [1,2,3], quantum simulation of condensed matter systems [4,5], tests of fundamental laws of physics [6,7,8,9,10], and ultracold and controlled chemistry [5,11,12,13,14]
The cell, aperture, and beam regions, this approach is able to reproduce nontrivial features of various cryogenic buffer gas beam (CBGB) designs [18], such as aerodynamic focusing and the effects of slowing cells and de Laval nozzles, that depend on the particular behavior of both the molecules and buffer gas. These results indicate that the two-step approach correctly models both the intermediatedensity regime of the cell and the low-density regime of the beam itself, offering a robust tool for CBGB study and optimization across a wide range of applications
We present a two-step approach to simulating the dynamics of the CBGB
Summary
There is considerable interest in physics with cold molecules because of their applications in a wide variety of areas, including quantum computing [1,2,3], quantum simulation of condensed matter systems [4,5], tests of fundamental laws of physics [6,7,8,9,10], and ultracold and controlled chemistry [5,11,12,13,14]. Methods to cool generic molecules directly are of interest, with the two most relevant techniques being supersonic beams [16] and buffer gas cooling [17,18] These methods rely on collisions with a cold, inert gas such as helium or neon and can cool a variety of species, from atoms to large complex polyatomics [19], down to temperatures of ∼1 K. These methods, especially buffer gas cooling, are useful as starting points for further cooling, such as laser [20,21], sympathetic [22,23], evaporative [24,25], or optoelectrical [26,27] cooling
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