Stopping Supersonic Beams with an Atomic Coilgun

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method to stop a supersonic atomic beam using a sequence of pulsed electromagnetic coils, enabling precise control of atomic motion for applications in physics and chemistry.

Contribution

It introduces an atomic coilgun technique to decelerate and stop a supersonic atomic beam, a novel approach for manipulating atomic velocities.

Findings

Successfully stopped a metastable neon atomic beam

Demonstrated precise timing control of electromagnetic coils

Potential applications in fundamental physics and chemistry

Abstract

We report the stopping of an atomic beam, using a series of pulsed electromagnetic coils. We use a supersonic beam of metastable neon created in a gas discharge as a monochromatic source of paramagnetic atoms. A series of coils is fired in a timed sequence to bring the atoms to near-rest, where they are detected on a micro-channel plate. Applications to fundamental problems in physics and chemistry are discussed.