Pulsed molecular beams - a promising tool for the study of molecular dynamics and structure

A molecular-beam source has been developed which provides supersonic beams of very high intensity in pulses of duration down to about 10 μs. These and similar sources have already found applications in studies of inelastic molecular scattering, photodissociation dynamics and laser spectroscopy. In experiments of each type, the use of pulsed sources can result in improvements by orders of magnitude in the signal-to-background ratio compared to similar experiments with steady-state beam sources. Prospects seem excellent for applying the same technology to other types of molecular-scattering and spectroscopy experiments. It also seems likely that the combination of a basic pulsed-beam source with other techniques - pulsed laser photodissociation, for example - will result in useful pulsed sources for many interesting atomic and molecular species. (author)