Toward Cold Chemistry with Magnetically Decelerated Supersonic Beams

Researchers conducted studies to explore the potential of cold chemistry with magnetically decelerated supersonic beams. The researchers demonstrated that magnetic deceleration offered many possibilities in reactive scattering at low ̃ 1 K temperatures. Atoms, such as hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and fluorine were decelerated through magnetic deceleration, allowing investigations of canonical atom-diatomic molecule reactions. These processes were also tracked using quantum mechanical calculations that were necessary to correctly describe dynamics at low temperatures. Reaction complexity was gradually increased by moving to a larger number of involved atoms. An effective moving magnetic trap potential was created using a series of spatially overlapping traps and activating them in a temporally overlapping pulse sequence to conduct the investigations.