Hannover 2016 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 16: Collisions, scattering and correlation phenomena II

A 16.3: Vortrag

Dienstag, 1. März 2016, 15:15–15:30, f142

Two-channel model for cold collisions of metastable neon atoms — •Christian Cop and Reinhold Walser — TU Darmstadt, Institut für Angewandte Physik, Hochschulstr. 4a, D-64289 Darmstadt

Although metastable noble gas has begun in the 1980s for various species, Bose-Einstein condensation has only been demonstrated for metastable helium so far. At the technical university of Darmstadt, the group of G. Birkl investigates experimentally the prospects to condense metastable neon atoms (Ne*) to degeneracy. High internal energy of Ne* (16 eV) leads to loss rates through Penning ionization (PI). PI may be suppressed by spin polarization of the atoms, which has been demonstrated for Ne* [1]. Additionally, experimental data is now available on cross sections and loss rates of isotope- and spin-mixtures of the three stable isotopes of Ne*.

We set up a two-channel model, where the scattering channel is given by a realistic interaction potential for Ne*, coupled to an arbitrary loss channel via an arbitrary coupling. Suppression of PI is modeled by varying the coupling strength [2]. We present recent results and show, that the calculated values of the loss rates and cross sections of the different isotope- and spin-mixtures are in very good agreement with the experimental data points.

[1] P. Spoden, M. Zinner, N. Herschbach, W.J. Van Drunen, W. Ertmer, G. Birkl, 2005, Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 223201

[2] C. Cop, A. Martin, G. Birkl, R. Walser, to be published