A novel molecular synchrotron for cold collision and EDM experiments

Abstract

Limited by the construction demands, the state-of-the-art molecular synchrotrons consist of only 40 segments that hardly make a good circle. Imperfections in the circular structure will lead to the appearance of unstable velocity regions (i.e. stopbands), where molecules of certain forward velocity will be lost from the structure. In this paper, we propose a stopband-free molecular synchrotron. It contains 1570 ring electrodes, which nearly make a perfect circle, capable of confining both light and heavy polar molecules in the low-field-seeking states. Molecular packets can be conveniently manipulated with this synchrotron by various means, like acceleration, deceleration or even trapping. Trajectory calculations are carried out using a pulsed 88 SrF molecular beam with a forward velocity of 50 m/s. The results show that the molecular beam can make more than 500 round trips inside the synchrotron with a 1/e lifetime of 6.2 s. The synchrotron can find potential applications in low-energy collision and reaction experiments or in the field of precision measurements, such as the searches for electric dipole moment of elementary particles.