Cooling and trapping polar molecules in an electrostatic trap

An electrostatic trap for polar molecules is proposed. Loading and trapping of polar molecules can be realized by applying different voltages to the two electrodes of the trap. For ND₃ molecular beams centered at ∼10 m/s, a high loading efficiency of ∼67% can be obtained, as confirmed by our Monte Carlo simulations. The volume of our trap is as large as ∼3.6 cm³, suitable for study of the adiabatic cooling of trapped molecules. Our simulations indicate that trapped ND₃ molecules can be cooled from ∼23.3 mK to 1.47 mK by reducing the trapping voltages on the electrodes from 50.0 kV to 1.00 kV.