Deceleration and trapping of polar molecules
Prof. Dr. Gerard Meijer (FOM-Institute for Plasmaphysics, Nieuwegein/NL)

It is now widely acknowledged that samples of cold molecules hold great promise for fundamental physics studies, and a variety of methods are currently being explored to produce such samples. The method that we have developed makes use of time-varying electric fields to decelerate pulsed beams of polar molecules. The possibility to continuously tune the absolute velocity of molecules in a beam yields fascinating perspectives for molecular beam scattering studies, for precision spectroscopy and for 'molecule optics' experiments. In addition, it allows the velocity to be sufficiently reduced that the slow molecules can subsequently be electrostatically trapped, either in a storage ring or in a quadrupole trap.