Formation of van der Waals molecules in buffer gas cooled magnetic traps
Abstract
We show that a large class of helium-containing cold polar molecules form readily in a cryogenic buffer gas, achieving densities as high as 1012 cm-3. We explore the spin relaxation of these molecules in buffer gas loaded magnetic traps, and identify a loss mechanism based on Landau-Zener transitions arising from the anisotropic hyperfine interaction. Our results show that the recently observed strong T6 thermal dependence of spin change in buffer gas trapped silver (Ag) is accounted for by the formation and spin change of AgHe, thus providing evidence for molecular formation in a buffer gas trap.
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