Manufacturing a thin wire electrostatic trap for ultracold polar molecules

J Kleinert; C Haimberger; P J Zabawa; N P Bigelow

doi:10.1063/1.2815338

Manufacturing a thin wire electrostatic trap for ultracold polar molecules

Rev Sci Instrum. 2007 Nov;78(11):113108. doi: 10.1063/1.2815338.

Authors

J Kleinert¹, C Haimberger, P J Zabawa, N P Bigelow

Affiliation

¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy and The Laboratory for Laser Energetics, The University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627, USA.

PMID: 18052466
DOI: 10.1063/1.2815338

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.