Elastic slowing of supersonic beams

In this thesis we describe a new method of producing an intense, cold beam of slow noble gas atoms. A beam produced by a pulsed cryogenic supersonic nozzle is reflected from a single crystal atom mirror mounted on the tip of a spinning rotor. Simulations show that fluxes of 10¹¹ He atoms per second at velocities of 50m/s and temperatures of less than 20¹K in the longitudinal direction are feasible. We describe in detail the apparatus built in our laboratory. We are able to tune the speed of a He-Ne mixture from 265m/s to 510m/s while maintaining a cold, monochromatic beam. We plan to reduce the speed of the reflected beam further to under 100m/s in the future by simple modifications of our system.Physic