Getting a grip on the transverse motion in a Zeeman decelerator

Journal Article · Fri Mar 14 04:00:00 EDT 2014 · Journal of Chemical Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4866906· OSTI ID:22253473

Dulitz, Katrin; Motsch, Michael ^[1]; Vanhaecke, Nicolas ^[2]

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1. Laboratorium für Physikalische Chemie, ETH Zürich, 8093 Zürich (Switzerland)
2. Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Faradayweg 4–6, 14195 Berlin, Germany and Laboratoire Aimé Cotton, CNRS, Université Paris-Sud, ENS Cachan, 91405 Orsay (France)

Zeeman deceleration is an experimental technique in which inhomogeneous, time-dependent magnetic fields generated inside an array of solenoid coils are used to manipulate the velocity of a supersonic beam. A 12-stage Zeeman decelerator has been built and characterized using hydrogen atoms as a test system. The instrument has several original features including the possibility to replace each deceleration coil individually. In this article, we give a detailed description of the experimental setup, and illustrate its performance. We demonstrate that the overall acceptance in a Zeeman decelerator can be significantly increased with only minor changes to the setup itself. This is achieved by applying a rather low, anti-parallel magnetic field in one of the solenoid coils that forms a temporally varying quadrupole field, and improves particle confinement in the transverse direction. The results are reproduced by three-dimensional numerical particle trajectory simulations thus allowing for a rigorous analysis of the experimental data. The findings suggest the use of a modified coil configuration to improve transverse focusing during the deceleration process.

• OSTI ID: 22253473
• Journal Information: Journal of Chemical Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Chemical Physics Journal Issue: 10 Vol. 140; ISSN JCPSA6; ISSN 0021-9606
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
HYDROGEN
MAGNETIC FIELDS
PARTICLES
SIMULATION
SOLENOIDS
TIME DEPENDENCE
ZEEMAN EFFECT