Heteronuclear ionizing collisions between laser-cooled metastable helium atoms
Atomic Physics
2009-11-13 v1
Abstract
We have investigated cold ionizing heteronuclear collisions in dilute mixtures of metastable (2 3S1) 3He and 4He atoms, extending our previous work on the analogous homonuclear collisions [R. J. W. Stas et al., PRA 73, 032713 (2006)]. A simple theoretical model of such collisions enables us to calculate the heteronuclear ionization rate coefficient, for our quasi-unpolarized gas, in the absence of resonant light (T = 1.2 mK): K34(th) = 2.4*10^-10 cm^3/s. This calculation is supported by a measurement of K34 using magneto-optically trapped mixtures containing about 1*10^8 atoms of each species, K34(exp) = 2.5(8)*10^-10 cm^3/s. Theory and experiment show good agreement.
Cite
@article{arxiv.physics/0701194,
title = {Heteronuclear ionizing collisions between laser-cooled metastable helium atoms},
author = {J. M. McNamara and R. J. W. Stas and W. Hogervorst and W. Vassen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/0701194},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
8 pages, 6 figures