Bose-Einstein Condensation and Spin Mixtures of Optically Trapped Metastable Helium
Abstract
We report the realization of a BEC of metastable helium-4 atoms (4He*) in an all optical potential. Up to 10^5 spin polarized 4He* atoms are condensed in an optical dipole trap formed from a single, focused, vertically propagating far off-resonance laser beam. The vertical trap geometry is chosen to best match the resolution characteristics of a delay-line anode micro-channel plate detector capable of registering single He* atoms. We also confirm the instability of certain spin state combinations of 4He* to two-body inelastic processes, which necessarily affects the scope of future experiments using optically trapped spin mixtures. In order to better quantify this constraint, we measure spin state resolved two-body inelastic loss rate coefficients in the optical trap.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1003.4641,
title = {Bose-Einstein Condensation and Spin Mixtures of Optically Trapped Metastable Helium},
author = {G. B. Partridge and J. -C. Jaskula and M. Bonneau and D. Boiron and C. I. Westbrook},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1003.4641},
year = {2010}
}