Collisional Properties of Cold Spin-Polarized Metastable Neon Atoms
Quantum Physics
2016-09-08 v2
Abstract
We measure the rates of elastic and inelastic two-body collisions of cold spin-polarized neon atoms in the metastable 3P2 state for 20^Ne and 22^Ne in a magnetic trap. From particle loss, we determine the loss parameter of inelastic collisions beta=6.5(18)x10^{-12} cm^3s^{-1} for 20^Ne and beta=1.2(3)x10^{-11}cm^3{s}^{-1} for 22^Ne. These losses are caused by ionizing (i.e. Penning) collisions %to more than and occur less frequently than for unpolarized atoms. This proves the suppression of Penning ionization due to spin-polarization. From cross-dimensional relaxation measurements, we obtain elastic scattering lengths of a=-180(40) a_0 for 20^Ne and a=+150(+80/-50) a_0 for 22^Ne, where a_0=0.0529 nm.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0502020,
title = {Collisional Properties of Cold Spin-Polarized Metastable Neon Atoms},
author = {P. Spoden and M. Zinner and N. Herschbach and W. van Drunen and W. Ertmer and G. Birkl},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0502020},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
4 pages, 3 figures