Collisional Properties of Cold Spin-Polarized Metastable Neon Atoms

Spoden, Peter; Zinner, M.; Herschbach, N.; Drunen, W.J. van; Ertmer, W.; Birkl, G.

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.94.223201

Cited by 27 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 31 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It is the purpose of the present work to extend the available experimental data by the investigation of heteronuclear collision between all possible combinations of the stable isotopes of neon. There exist two stable bosonic isotopes, 20 Ne (natural abundance: 90.48%) and 22 Ne (9.25%), and one fermionic isotope, 21 Ne, with an abundance of 0.27% [20]. This work complements our previous measurements on homonuclear collisions for the bosonic isotopes 20 Ne and 22 Ne [21].…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 76%

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 76%

“…There exist two stable bosonic isotopes, 20 Ne (natural abundance: 90.48%) and 22 Ne (9.25%), and one fermionic isotope, 21 Ne, with an abundance of 0.27% [20]. This work complements our previous measurements on homonuclear collisions for the bosonic isotopes 20 Ne and 22 Ne [21].In this paper we report on trapping of all three stable isotopes and all two-isotope mixtures of laser-cooled Ne* in a magnetic trap. We present measurements on the rates of heteronuclear ionizing collisions and heteronuclear thermal relaxation cross sections in isotope mixtures of spin-polarized Ne*.…”

supporting

confidence: 77%

“…Sympathetic cooling of 22 Ne, which has a positive scattering length of a = 150 a 0 , [21] using 20 Ne as a coolant might open a novel route to produce quantum degenerate bosonic Ne*. Sympathetic cooling of 21 Ne, using one of the bosonic isotopes as a coolant, could allow for the creation of a cold, dense sample of spinpolarized fermionic neon which could complement experiments with fermionic 3 He for studying, e.g., the effect of Pauli blocking [22] on Penning ionization for heavier rare-gas atoms [16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Heteronuclear collisions between laser-cooled metastable neon atoms

et al. 2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We investigate heteronuclear collisions in isotope mixtures of laser-cooled metastable ( 3 P2) neon. Experiments are performed with spin-polarized atoms in a magnetic trap for all two-isotope combinations of the stable neon isotopes 20 Ne, 21 Ne, and 22 Ne. We determine the rate coefficients for heteronuclear ionizing collisions to β21,20 = (3.9 ± 2.7) × 10 −11 cm 3 /s, β22,20 = (2.6 ± 0.7) × 10 −11 cm 3 /s, and β21,22 = (3.9 ± 1.9) × 10 −11 cm 3 /s. We also study heteronuclear elastic collision processes and give upper bounds for heteronuclear thermal relaxation cross sections. This work significantly extends the limited available experimental data on heteronuclear ionizing collisions for laser-cooled atoms involving one or more rare gas atoms in a metastable state. I. INTRODUCTIONDue to their high internal energy which surpasses the ionization energy of almost all neutral atomic and molecular collision partners, metastable rare-gas atoms (Rg*) prepared by laser cooling techniques [1] present a unique class of atoms for the investigation of cold and ultracold collisions [2]. With lifetimes ranging from 14.73 s (neon)[3] to 7870 s (helium) [4], the first excited metastable states present effective ground states for applying standard laser cooling techniques. The resulting extremely low kinetic energy of the laser-cooled atoms (≈ 10 −10 eV) stands in strong contrast to the high internal energy between 8 eV (xenon) and 20 eV (helium). This offers unique conditions not accessible with samples of lasercooled alkali-metal atoms. In particular, the high internal energy of the metastable state allows for Penning (PI) and associative (AI) ionizing collisions,to dominate losses in trapped Rg* samples at high densities. Since direct detection of the collision products (using electron multipliers) as well as of the remaining Rg* atoms is possible with high efficiency, detailed studies of homonuclear ionizing collisions have been carried out for all rare gas elements (see [1] for an overview). Additional motivation for these investigations arises from the fact, that favorable rate coefficients for inelastic but also for elastic collisions are essential for the achievement of quantum degeneracy which for Rg* atoms so far has only been demonstrated for 4 He [5-8] and 3 He [9]. For unpolarized Rg* samples, two-body loss rate coefficients for PI [10] between β = 6 × 10 −11 cm 3 /s for 132 Xe [11] and β = 1 × 10 −9 cm 3 /s for 22 Ne [12] have been measured. Spin polarizing the atoms to a spin-stretched * gerhard.birkl@physik.tu-darmstadt.de state may suppress PI: In a collision of atoms in spinstretched states the total spin of the reactants is larger than the total spin of the products. Thus, if spin is conserved, PI collisions should be significantly reduced. In the case of He* in the 3 S 1 state, a suppression of four orders of magnitude has been observed [7,13]. For the heavier rare gases, however, the metastable state 3 P 2 is formed by an exited s electron and a p 5 core with orbital momentum l = 1. This leads to an anisot...

show abstract

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 76%

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 76%

supporting

confidence: 77%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Heteronuclear collisions between laser-cooled metastable neon atoms

et al. 2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…After a trap compression, the collision rate is increased by a factor ∼ 20 compared with the collision rate without Doppler cooling, thanks to the temperature reduction and the subsequent scattering cross-section increase. In situ Doppler cooling thus appears to be a very e cient cooling stage, whose use is now generalized to other atomic species with high-temperature magneto-optical traps, such as Cr [91], Ne [92] or He [93].…”

Section: In Situ Doppler Coolingmentioning

confidence: 99%