Hannover 2010 – wissenschaftliches Programm
Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Downloads | Hilfe
Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 55: Poster II
Q 55.17: Poster
Donnerstag, 11. März 2010, 16:00–19:00, Lichthof
Collisional properties of metastable neon — •Thomas Feldker1, Holger John1, Jan Schütz1, Norbert Herschbach2, and Gerhard Birkl1 — 1Institut für Angewandte Physik, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Schlossgartenstraße 7, 64289 Darmstadt — 2QUEST Institute at PTB, Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Bundesallee 100, 38116 Braunschweig
We study the collisional interactions of metastable neon (Ne*) in the 3P2 state in a magneto-optical trap and magnetic trap. The remarkable feature of Ne* is its extremely high internal energy which, on the one hand, enables sensitive detection using electron multipliers but, on the other hand, leads to very high two-body losses due to Penning ionization. The bad ratio of elastic to inelastic collisions hampers efficient evaporative cooling and, thus, achievement of quantum degeneracy.
We are therefor investigating possibilities to manipulate the collisional interactions. One objective is to prepare the atoms in certain superposition states of Zeeman sublevels using STIRAP which is proposed to significantly suppress inelastic collisions. Another approach is to exploit inter-isotopic collisions. We are able to trap two-isotope combinations of bosonic 20Ne, bosonic 22Ne, and fermionic 21Ne and are exploring possible schemes for sympathetic cooling. We report on the status of the experiments.