Düsseldorf 2007 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 70: Ultrakalte Atomstöße (gemeinsam mit A)
Q 70.6: Talk
Friday, March 23, 2007, 12:00–12:15, 6G
Interactions of metastable neon atoms in magnetic and optical traps — •N. Herschbach1, W.J. van Drunen1, W. Ertmer2, and G. Birkl1 — 1Institut für Angewandte Physik; Technische Universität Darmstadt, Schlossgartenstr. 7, D-64289 Darmstadt, Germany — 2Institut für Quantenoptik; Leibniz Universität Hannover, Welfengarten 1, D-30167 Hannover, Germany
We investigate the cooling and the phyisics of interactions of metastable neon atoms. We measured elastic and inelastic collisional properties of cold metastable neon (3P2 state) in a magnetic trap. We found suppression of Penning ionization and achieved a 200-fold increase in phase space density by rf-forced evaporative cooling in the magnetic trap with 22Ne [1]. However, efficiency of evaporative cooling has to be improved in order to reach quantum degeneracy.
Therefore we implemented a crossed optical dipole trap, which we can load from a magneto-optical trap as well as from a magnetic trap. This enables us to investigate the magnetic field dependence of collisional properties of metastable neon. More importantly, we can now trap metastable neon in states which cannot be trapped magnetically.
As a result we trapped, for the first time, neon in the 3P0 metastable state. Measurements of the number decay of trapped atoms will allow to infer the rate coefficient for two-body loss of neon in the 3P0 metastable state for both bosonic isotopes 20Ne and 22Ne. For this purpose, a careful characterization of the optical trap is required.
[1] P. Spoden et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 223201 (2005)
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