Abstract:We report on an experimental study of surface ionization of metastable calcium atoms on a hot polycrystalline tungsten surface in vacuum. We implemented a hollow-cathode discharge to excite a fraction of calcium atoms in an atomic beam to metastable states and collected the resulting calcium ions. We observed that metastable calcium atoms are ionized with a significantly greater efficiency than ground-state atoms, and the results suggest that virtually every metastable atom impacting the hot surface is ionized… Show more
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