Deceleration and trapping of ammonia molecules in a traveling wave decelerator

TL;DR

This paper details a traveling wave decelerator for ammonia molecules, demonstrating improved control and phase-space manipulation, building on previous static trapping methods.

Contribution

It introduces a traveling wave decelerator with enhanced control over molecules, providing new experimental data and analysis of its performance.

Findings

Successful deceleration of ammonia molecules

Demonstration of phase-space manipulation

Enhanced control over molecular samples

Abstract

We have recently demonstrated static trapping of ammonia isotopologues in a decelerator that consists of a series of ring-shaped electrodes to which oscillating high voltages are applied [Quintero-P\'{e}rez et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 133003 (2013)]. In this paper we provide further details on this traveling wave decelerator and present new experimental data that illustrate the control over molecules that it offers. We analyze the performance of our setup under different deceleration conditions and demonstrate phase-space manipulation of the trapped molecular sample.