Inelastic Collision Rates of Trapped Metastable Hydrogen
Atomic Physics
2009-11-07 v1
Abstract
We report the first detailed decay studies of trapped metastable (2S) hydrogen. By two-photon excitation of ultracold H samples, we have produced clouds of at least 5x10^7 magnetically trapped 2S atoms at densities greater than 4x10^10 cm^-3 and temperatures below 100 \muK. We derive experimental values for the total 2S-2S two-body loss rate constant in this temperature regime. Our results are in the range of recent theoretical calculations. We also find experimental upper limits on the rate constant for loss due to inelastic 1S-2S collisions.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.physics/0210019,
title = {Inelastic Collision Rates of Trapped Metastable Hydrogen},
author = {David Landhuis and Lia Matos and Stephen C. Moss and Julia K. Steinberger and Kendra Vant and Lorenz Willmann and Thomas J. Greytak and Daniel Kleppner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/0210019},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
Submitted to Phys. Rev. A. Pre-print format: 21 pages, 8 figures