Generation of high-energy-resolved NH3 molecular beam by a Stark decelerator with 179 stages*

Abstract We demonstrate the production of cold, slow NH 3 molecules from a supersonic NH 3 molecular beam using our electrostatic Stark decelerator consisting of 179 slowing stages. By using this long Stark decelerator, a supersonic NH 3 molecular beam can be easily decelerated to trappable velocities. Here we present two modes for operating the Stark decelerator to slow the supersonic NH 3 molecules. The first is the normal mode, where all 179 stages are used to decelerate molecules, and it allows decelerating the NH 3 molecular beam from 333 m/s to 18 m/s, with a final temperature of 29.2 mK. The second is the deceleration-bunch mode, which allows us to decelerate the supersonic NH 3 beam from 333 m/s to 24 m/s, with a final temperature of 2.9 mK. It is clear that the second mode promises to produce colder (high-energy-resolution) molecular samples than the normal mode. Three-dimensional Monte Carlo simulations are also performed for the experiments and they show a good agreement with the observed results. The deceleration-bunch operation mode presented here can find applications in the fields of cold collisions, high-resolution spectroscopy, and precision measurements.