1. Could you explain the significance of your article to the non-specialist?

Molecules are interesting, complicated, and difficult to control. What if we could hold on to molecules, manipulate them, juggle them, and essentially make them do exactly what we want? 

A decade ago, this idea of such ultimate control over molecules and neutrals was science fiction. Now, we've made it science. Our Stark decelerated (and focused) beams, with their well-defined tunable velocity and velocity distribution (temperature), provide an unprecedented level of control in a wide variety of molecular beam experiments, and permits studies at high precision, which have traditionally shied away from molecules due to their innate complexity.

 

2. What has motivated you to conduct this work?

Our efforts to fully manipulate neutral molecules in the gas phase were inspired by both the impressive amount of control available for atoms and the simultaneous lack of a similar control on par with that over - arguably more interesting - molecules. Additionally, we saw how the knowledge of charged particle accelerator physics could be applied, in an analogous way, to electric fields and neutral molecules. We wanted to, and still are, pushing this analogy to its extremes in developing not only decelerators and focusers, but also storage rings and traps. (At the same time, we are highlighting the benefits and power of combining two branches of physics to enhance a third removed area of physics.)

 

 

 

3. Where do you see this work developing in the future?

This technique, which has only been developed over the last 7-8 years, is still being improved upon, however even at this young stage, a Stark decelerator is fairly reasonable to implement in any physics or physical chemistry lab. In the future, these same techniques will be used to control larger, more intricate molecules (keyword: bio molecules) and their various conformational structures in the gas phase. We hope to see Stark decelerators become a wide spread tool ("workhorse") for high resolution spectroscopy and collision studies.

 

4. Are there any particular challenges facing future research in this area?

There are of course still challenges that await. Up till now, most of our experiments have been more demonstrations than applications. By increasing the densities of molecules, and simultaneously decreasing their temperature, experiments concerning e.g. cold collisions, molecular clocks, and the EDM, can be accomplished. In fact, this method provides the easiest way to access many properties, for example excited and ground state lifetimes, for the first time experimentally. Now it is really time to play.