Thermalization of magnetically trapped metastable helium
Atomic Physics
2009-11-07 v1 General Physics
Abstract
We have observed thermalization by elastic collisions of magnetically trapped metastable helium atoms. Our method directly samples the reconstruction of a thermal energy distribution after the application of an RF knife. The relaxation time of our sample towards equilibrium gives an elastic collision rate constant close to the unitarity limit.
Cite
@article{arxiv.physics/0102068,
title = {Thermalization of magnetically trapped metastable helium},
author = {A. Browaeys and A. Robert and O. Sirjean and J. Poupard and S. Nowak and D. Boiron and C. I. Westbrook and A. Aspect},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/0102068},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
4 pages, 3 figures