Helium nanodroplets doped with polar molecules are studied by electrostatic deflection. This broadly applicable method allows even polyatomic molecules to attain sub-Kelvin temperatures and nearly full orientation in the field. The resulting intense force from the field gradient strongly deflects even droplets with tens of thousands of atoms, the most massive neutral systems studied by beam "deflectometry." We use the deflections to extract droplet size distributions.Moreover, since each host droplet deflects according to its mass, spatial filtering of the deflected beam translates into size filtering of neutral fragile nanodroplets. As an example, we measure the dopant ionization probability as a function of droplet radius and determine the mean free path for charge hopping through the helium matrix. The technique will enable separation of doped and neat nanodroplets and size-dependent spectroscopic studies. * Present address: Modern Electron, Bellevue, WA 98007, USA Introduction.-If the internal and relative motion of molecules is cooled into the sub-Kelvin range, it becomes possible to observe and steer their reactions with precision, to determine their physical parameters and structures with high accuracy, and to use external fields to finely control their motion and orientation [1-4]. For example, buffer-gas cooling [5] can be employed as an entryway to electrostatic guiding and ultracold trapping [6,7], merged beams enable exploration of chemical reactions in the quantum regime [8], and Stark deflection of small molecules in a supersonic beam can be used to spatially separate their low rotational states and conformers [9].While high level of control has been demonstrated for individual small molecules, pursuing it for larger polyatomic systems becomes increasingly demanding [10]. Their rotational spectra are more congested, their degrees of freedom are less efficiently and uniformly cooled by nozzle expansion [10,11], and their higher masses reduce the deflection.A powerful tool to cool and study molecules of a wide range of sizes is "helium nanodroplet isolation" [12][13][14][15][16]. Molecules are entrapped and transported by a beam of 4 He N nanodroplets generated by expansion of helium gas through a cryogenic nozzle. Nanodroplets cool by evaporation upon exiting the nozzle, reaching an internal temperature of only T 0 =370 mK and turning superfluid. This temperature is set by the surface binding energy of helium atoms [17,18] and has been verified, as has the onset of superfluidity, by rotational spectroscopy of entrapped molecules [12]. When the droplet beam passes through one or more vapor-filled cells, atoms and molecules are readily picked up, cooled by heat transfer to the helium matrix (evaporation of surface helium atoms promptly brings the complex back to T 0 ), and carried along by the droplet beam.This method is unique in being applicable to a variety of molecules and atoms: essentially all that is required for embedding is the availability of ~10 -6 -10 -4 mbar of vapor. Its other key feature...

Long-range intermolecular forces are able to steer polar molecules submerged in superfluid helium nanodroplets into highly polar metastable configurations. We demonstrate that the presence of such special structures can be identified, in a direct and determinative way, by electrostatic deflection of the doped nanodroplet beam. The measurement also establishes the structures' electric dipole moments. In consequence, the introduced approach is complementary to spectroscopic studies of low-temperature molecular assembly reactions. It is enabled by the fact that within the cold superfluid matrix the molecular dipoles become nearly completely oriented by the applied electric field. As a result, the massive (tens of thousands of helium atoms) nanodroplets undergo significant deflections. The method is illustrated here by an application to dimers and trimers of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) molecules. We interpret the experimental results with ab initio theory, mapping the potential energy surface of DMSO complexes and simulating their low temperature aggregation dynamics.

Abundance spectra of CO2N clusters up to N approximately 500 acquired under a wide range of adiabatic expansion conditions are analyzed within the evaporative ensemble framework. The analysis reveals that...

Deuterated imidazole (IM) molecules, dimers and trimers formed in liquid helium nanodroplets are studied by the electrostatic beam deflection method. Monitoring the deflection profile of (IM)D + provides a direct way to establish that it is the primary product of the ionization-induced fragmentation both of (IM)2 and (IM)3. The magnitude of the deflection determines the electric dipole moments of the parent clusters: nearly 9 D for the dimer and 14.5 D for the trimer. These very large dipole values confirm theoretical predictions and derive from a polar chain bonding arrangement of the heterocyclic imidazole molecules.

Metal-fullerene compounds are characterized by significant electron transfer to the fullerene cage, giving rise to an electric dipole moment. We use the method of electrostatic beam deflection to verify whether...