Water vapor at a translational temperature of1K

Abstract

We report the creation of a confined slow beam of heavy-water $({\mathrm{D}}_{2}\mathrm{O})$ molecules with a translational temperature around $1\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{K}$. This is achieved by filtering slow ${\mathrm{D}}_{2}\mathrm{O}$ from a thermal ensemble with inhomogeneous static electric fields exploiting the quadratic Stark shift of ${\mathrm{D}}_{2}\mathrm{O}$. All previous demonstrations of electric-field manipulation of cold dipolar molecules rely on a predominantly linear Stark shift. Further, on the basis of elementary molecular properties and our filtering technique we argue that our ${\mathrm{D}}_{2}\mathrm{O}$ beam contains molecules in only a few rovibrational states.