Deceleration and trapping of heavy diatomic molecules using a ring-decelerator

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how a ring-decelerator can effectively decelerate and trap heavy diatomic molecules like SrF, significantly improving precision measurement capabilities for fundamental symmetry tests.

Contribution

It introduces a ring-decelerator design that outperforms traditional methods for decelerating heavy diatomic molecules, enhancing their suitability for precision experiments.

Findings

Ring-decelerator outperforms traditional Stark decelerators by at least an order of magnitude.

Decelerated molecules can achieve nearly two orders of magnitude sensitivity gain in parity violation measurements.

Simulation results demonstrate high efficiency in deceleration and trapping of SrF molecules.

Abstract

We present an analysis of the deceleration and trapping of heavy diatomic molecules in low-field seeking states by a moving electric potential. This moving potential is created by a 'ring-decelerator', which consists of a series of ring-shaped electrodes to which oscillating high voltages are applied. Particle trajectory simulations have been used to analyze the deceleration and trapping efficiency for a group of molecules that is of special interest for precision measurements of fundamental discrete symmetries. For the typical case of the SrF molecule in the (N,M) = (2, 0) state, the ring-decelerator is shown to outperform traditional and alternate-gradient Stark decelerators by at least an order of magnitude. If further cooled by a stage of laser cooling, the decelerated molecules allow for a sensitivity gain in a parity violation measurement, compared to a cryogenic molecular beam experiment, of almost two orders of magnitude.