English

Cold Collision Frequency Shift of the 1S-2S Transition in Hydrogen

Atomic Physics 2009-10-31 v2

Abstract

We have observed the cold collision frequency shift of the 1S-2S transition in trapped spin-polarized atomic hydrogen. We find Δν1S2S=3.8(8)×1010nHzcm3\Delta \nu_{1S-2S} = -3.8(8)\times 10^{-10} n Hz cm^3, where nn is the sample density. From this we derive the 1S-2S s-wave triplet scattering length, a1S2S=1.4(3)a_{1S-2S}=-1.4(3) nm, which is in fair agreement with a recent calculation. The shift provides a valuable probe of the distribution of densities in a trapped sample.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.physics/9809016,
  title  = {Cold Collision Frequency Shift of the 1S-2S Transition in Hydrogen},
  author = {Thomas C. Killian and Dale. G. Fried and Lorenz Willmann and David Landhuis and Stephen C. Moss and Thomas J. Greytak and Daniel Kleppner},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/9809016},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in PRL, 9 pages, 4 PostScript figures, ReVTeX. Updated connection of our measurement to theoretical work