| The aim of the proposed research is to develop a new chemical method to produce translationally cold molecules. A chemical bond in a molecule will be dissociated by a well controlled polarized laser pulse. The available energy is released as internal energy of the fragments and as kinetic energy of the two fragments. The kinetic energy is shared between the two fagments in accordance with the conservation of linear momentum. Choosing the appropriate laser photon energy for dissociation the kinetic energy released into recoil can be of the order of 1 eV. This means that the momentum recoil kick can be strong and will lead to a change in velocity of the order of 100-1000's m/s, within the same range as the typical velocity of a molecular beam. In our new proposed research we will direct the 'hot chemical' recoil kick on one of the molecular fragments to be spatially directed in such a way that it cancels the laboratory molecular beam center-of-mass velocity of the parent molecule. The recoil kick will result in molecular fragments with a vanishing laboratory velocity: translationally cold molecules will be produced. The molecular beam velocity of the parent molecules, the photon energy and the polarization of the laser can all be used to fine-tune the vanishing velocity of the molecular fragment. Once this new method has been demonstrated, the rich diversity of molecules in combination with the special properties of laser photons have great potential to produce cold clouds of a variety of molecules. |
