https://doi.org/10.1140/epjti/s40485-018-0048-y
Review
A detailed account of the measurements of cold collisions in a molecular synchrotron
LaserLaB, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vrije Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1081, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
* e-mail: H.L.Bethlem@vu.nl
Received:
6
March
2018
Accepted:
21
June
2018
Published online:
11
July
2018
We have recently demonstrated a general and sensitive method to study low energy collisions that exploits the unique properties of a molecular synchrotron (Van der Poel et al., Phys Rev Lett 120:033402, 2018). In that work, the total cross section for ND3 + Ar collisions was determined from the rate at which ammonia molecules were lost from the synchrotron due to collisions with argon atoms in supersonic beams. This paper provides further details on the experiment. In particular, we derive the model that was used to extract the relative cross section from the loss rate, and present measurements to characterize the spatial and velocity distributions of the stored ammonia molecules and the supersonic argon beams.
Key words: Cold molecules / Stark deceleration / Collisions / Molecular beams
© van der Poel and Bethlem; licensee Springer., 2018
Open Access This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..
