Electrostatic surface guiding of cold polar molecules with a single charged wire

This paper proposes a scheme to guide cold polar molecules by using a single charged wire half embanked in an insulating substrate and a homogeneous bias electric field, which is generated by a plate capacitor composed of two infinite parallel metal plates. The spatial distributions of the electrostatic field produced by the combination of the charged wire and the plate capacitor and the corresponding Stark potentials (including dipole forces) for metastable CO molecules are calculated, the relationships between the electric field and the parameters of our charged-wire layout are analysed. It also studies the influences of the insulator on the electric field distribution and the discharge effect. This study shows that the proposed scheme can be used to guide cold polar molecules in the weak-field - seeking states, and to form various molecule-optical elements, such as molecular funnel, molecular beam-splitters and molecule interferometer, even to construct a variety of integrated molecule-optical elements and their molecule chips.