Manufacturing a thin wire electrostatic trap (TWIST) for ultracold polar molecules

TL;DR

This paper introduces the design of a novel Thin Wire electrostatic trap (TWIST) that can be integrated directly with a magneto optical trap (MOT) to produce and trap ultracold polar molecules efficiently.

Contribution

It presents the first design of an electrostatic trap that can be superimposed onto a MOT, enabling continuous production and trapping of ultracold polar molecules without complex transfer procedures.

Findings

TWIST can be integrated with MOT for continuous ultracold molecule production.

The traps can be operated independently despite spatial overlap.

The design simplifies the process of trapping ultracold polar molecules.

Abstract

We present a detailed description on how to build a Thin WIre electroStatic Trap (TWIST) for ultracold polar molecules. It is the first design of an electrostatic trap that can be superimposed directly onto a magneto optical trap (MOT). We can thus continuously produce ultracold polar molecules via photoassociation from a two species MOT and instantaneously trap them in the TWIST without the need for complex transfer schemes. Despite the spatial overlap of the TWIST and the MOT, the two traps can be operated and optimized completely independently due to the complementary nature of the utilized trapping mechanisms.