Effect of kinetic energy on the doping efficiency of cesium cations into superfluid helium droplets

Abstract

We present an experimental investigation of the effect of kinetic energy on the ion doping efficiency of superfluid helium droplets using cesium cations from a thermionic emission source. The kinetic energy of Cs + is controlled by the bias voltage of a collection grid collinearly arranged with the droplet beam. Efficient doping from ions with kinetic energies from 20 eV up to 480 V has been observed in different sized helium droplets. The relative ion doping efficiency is determined by both the kinetic energy of the ions and the average size of the droplet beam. At a fixed source temperature, the number of doped droplets increases with increasing grid voltage, while the relative ion doping efficiency decreases. This result implies that not all ions are captured upon encountering with a sufficiently large droplet, a deviation from the near unity doping efficiency for closed shell neutral molecules. We propose that this drop in ion doping efficiency with kinetic energy is related to the limited deceleration rate inside a helium droplet. When the source temperature changes from 14 K to 17 K, the relative ion doping efficiency decreases rapidly, perhaps due to the lack of viable sized droplets. The size distribution of the Cs + -doped droplet beam can be measured by deflection and by energy filtering. The observed doped droplet size is about 5 × 10 6 helium atoms when the source temperature is between 14 K and 17 K.