The buffer gas beam: An intense, cold, and slow source for atoms and molecules

摘要

A study was conducted to present a survey of the latest developments in buffer gas beams and explore some of the possible future directions of these new methods. It was demonstrated that the buffer gas cooled beam method had a fundamentally different approach to cooling molecules into the Kelvin regime, as compared with supersonic expansion. The production of cold molecules was achieved by initially mixing two gases in a cold cell with dimensions of a few centimeters. A beam of cold molecules was formed when the buffer gas and target molecules escaped the cell through a few-millimeter-sized orifice, or a more complicated exit structure into a high vacuum region. The beam was a simulated room temperature source of a species with mass of 100 amu, and the simulated supersonic source used room temperature xenon as the carrier gas.