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 chargedwire half embanked in an insulating substrate and a homogeneous biaselectric field, which is generated by a plate capacitor composed of twoinfinite parallel metal plates. The spatial distributions of theelectrostatic field produced by the combination of the charged wire and theplate capacitor and the corresponding Stark potentials (including dipoleforces) for metastable CO molecules are calculated, the relationshipsbetween the electric field and the parameters of our charged-wire layout areanalysed. It also studies the influences of the insulator on the electric fielddistribution and the discharge effect. This study shows that the proposedscheme can be used to guide cold polar molecules in the weak-field --seekingstates, and to form various molecule-optical elements, such as molecularfunnel, molecular beam-splitters and molecule interferometer, even toconstruct a variety of integrated molecule-optical elements and theirmolecule chips.