High-temperature high-pressure all metal pulsed source of van der Waals dimers: towards the E-P-R experiment

An all-metal pulsed source of van der Waals (vdW) dimers was constructed; it operates at temperatures up to 1000 K and carrier gas stagnation pressures up to 10 bar. Performance of the source was demonstrated in the production and spectroscopy of both CdAr and Cd2 molecules in a supersonic beam expansion. Simulation of the recorded laser induced fluorescence (LIF) excitation spectra using the B31(53P1)←X10+(51S0) and b30u+(53P1)←X10g+(51S0) transitions in CdAr and Cd2, respectively, showed that these molecules were produced with a rotational temperature in the range from 3 K to 19 K. The source was incorporated into an experimental set-up dedicated to the realization of Bohm’s spin-1/2 particle version of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment for (111Cd)2 molecules.