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Stopping molecular rotation using coherent ultra-low-energy magnetic manipulations

Helen Chadwick Orcid Logo, Mark F. Somers, Aisling Stewart, Yosef Alkoby, Thomas J.D. Carter, Dagmar Butkovicova Orcid Logo, Gil Alexandrowicz Orcid Logo

Nature Communications, Volume: 13

Swansea University Authors: Helen Chadwick Orcid Logo, Aisling Stewart, Yosef Alkoby, Dagmar Butkovicova Orcid Logo, Gil Alexandrowicz Orcid Logo

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DOI (Published version): 10.1038/s41467-022-29830-3

Abstract

Rotational motion lies at the heart of intermolecular, molecule-surface chemistry and coldmolecule science, motivating the development of methods to excite and de-excite rotations.Existing schemes involve perturbing the molecules with photons or electrons which supply orremove energy comparable to t...

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Published in: Nature Communications
ISSN: 2041-1723
Published: Springer Nature 2022
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URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa59903
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Abstract: Rotational motion lies at the heart of intermolecular, molecule-surface chemistry and coldmolecule science, motivating the development of methods to excite and de-excite rotations.Existing schemes involve perturbing the molecules with photons or electrons which supply orremove energy comparable to the rotational level spacing. Here, we study the possibility ofde-exciting the molecular rotation of a D2 molecule, from J = 2 to the non-rotatingJ = 0 state, without using an energy-matched perturbation. We show that passing the beamthrough a 1 m long magnetic field, which splits the rotational projection states by only10−12 eV, can change the probability that a molecule-surface collision will stop a moleculefrom rotating and lose rotational energy which is 9 orders larger than that of the magneticmanipulation. Calculations confirm that different rotational orientations have different deexcitation probabilities but underestimate rotational flips (ΔmJ≠0), highlighting the importance of the results as a sensitive benchmark for further developing theoretical models ofmolecule-surface interactions.
Item Description: Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary materialavailable at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-29830-3.
Keywords: Molecular rotations, chemistry
College: Faculty of Science and Engineering
Funders: The authors would like to thank Prof. Geert-Jan Kroes for stimulating scientific discussions and Prof. Mark Brouard for stimulating scientific discussions and critical reading of the manuscript. This work was funded by an ERC consolidator grant (Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme grant 772228) (G. A.) and an EPSRC New Horizons grant (EP/V048589/1) (G. A.).

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