Surface-electrode decelerator and deflector for Rydberg atoms and molecules

A surface-electrode decelerator and deflector for Rydberg atoms and molecules has been developed with the goal of performing collisional experiments. Translationally cold H-2 molecules in a supersonic beam were excited to Rydberg-Stark states of principal quantum number n = 31, loaded into electric traps moving at a predetermined speed above the surface of a bent printed circuit board, decelerated, and deflected from the original direction of the supersonic beam by an angle of 10 degrees. The phase-space characteristics of the deflected beam were characterized by measuring the time-of-flight distribution and images of the Rydberg molecules and comparing them to the results of numerical particle-trajectory simulations. More than 1000 H-2 molecules were deflected per experimental cycle at a repetition rate of 25 Hz. The phase-space characteristics of the deflector make it attractive to study ion-molecule reactions at low collision energies.