Consideration of possible mass and velocity corrections to magnetic cluster experiments

Authors

Z.Y. Liu, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Peter A. Dowben, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
A.P. Popov, Engineering Physics Institute, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
David P. Pappas, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Magnetic Recording Measurements, Boulder, ColoradoFollow

Date of this Version

March 2003

Comments

Published Phys. Rev. A 67 (2003) art. no. 033202. Permission to use. Published by American Physical Society, Copyright 2003. Used by permission. http://prb.aps.org/

Abstract

Gadolinium occurs, in natural abundance, as several isotopes. The possible combinations of different gadolinium isotopes dictates that even for a fixed number of atoms in the cluster, clusters of gadolinium atoms will exhibit a range of masses. This and the expected consequence of the translation energy distributions are explored as possible corrections to Stern-Gerlach cluster beam-deflection experiments. Upon closer inspection of the experimental data, we find that the translation energy plus the vibrational temperature distribution may be inhomogeneous. This could be the origin of a long tail to high deflections in the experimental deflection profiles, at low cluster temperatures, in the magnetic cluster Stern-Gerlach experiments.