Production of long-lived atomic vapor inside high-density buffer gas

Abstract

Atomic vapor of four different paramagnetic species: gold, silver, lithium, and rubidium, is produced and studied inside several buffer gases: helium, nitrogen, neon, and argon. The paramagnetic atoms are injected into the buffer gas using laser ablation. Wires with diameters 25 $\mu$m, 50 $\mu$m, and 100 $\mu$m are used as ablation targets for gold and silver, bulk targets are used for lithium and rubidium. The buffer gas cools and confines the ablated atoms, slowing down their transport to the cell walls. Buffer gas temperatures between 20 K and 295 K, and densities between $10^{16}$ cm${}^{-3}$ and $2\times 10^{19}$ cm${}^{-3}$ are explored. Peak paramagnetic atom densities of $10^{11}$ cm${}^{-3}$ are routinely achieved. The longest observed paramagnetic vapor density decay times are 110 ms for silver at 20 K and 4 ms for lithium at 32 K. The candidates for the principal paramagnetic-atom loss mechanism are impurities in the buffer gas, dimer formation and atom loss on sputtered clusters.

Some minor editorial changes and corrections, added references

References in corpus (4)

• Optical Magnetometry
• Resonant nonlinear magneto-optical effects in atoms
• High-flux beam source for cold, slow atoms or molecules
• Can a quantum nondemolition measurement improve the sensitivity of an atomic magnetometer?

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• Potential energy curves for the interaction of Ag(5s) and Ag(5p) with noble gas atoms
• Enhanced coupling of electron and nuclear spins by quantum tunneling resonances
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