Measurement of the density profile of pure and seeded molecular beams by femtosecond ion imaging

Here, we report on femtosecond ion imaging experiments to measure the density profile of a pulsed supersonic molecular beam. Ion images are measured for both a molecular beam and bulk gas under identical experimental conditions via femtosecond multiphoton ionization of Xe atoms. We report the density profile of the molecular beam, and the measured absolute density is compared with theoretical calculations of the centre line beam density. Subsequently, we discuss reasons accounting for the differences between measurements and calculations and propose that strong skimmer interference is the most probable cause for the differences. Furthermore, we report on experiments measuring the centre line density of seeded supersonic beams. The femtosecond ion images show that seeding the heavy Xe atom at low relative seed fractions (1%-10%) in a light carrier gas like Ne results in strong relative enhancements of up to two orders of magnitude.