Magnetic-field dependent trap loss of ultracold metastable helium

Abstract

We have experimentally studied the magnetic-field dependence of the decay of a Bose-Einstein condensate of metastable 4He atoms confined in an optical dipole trap, for atoms in the m=+1 and m=-1 magnetic substates, and up to 450 G. Our measurements confirm long-standing calculations of the two-body loss rate coefficient that show an increase above 50 G. We demonstrate that for m=-1 atoms, decay is due to three-body recombination only, with a three-body loss rate coefficient of 6.5(0.4)(0.6)10^(-27)cm^6s^(-1), which is interesting in the context of universal few-body theory. We have also searched for a recently-predicted d-wave Feshbach resonance, but did not observe it.

7 pages, 6 figures

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Cited by in corpus (12)

• Precision spectroscopy of helium in a magic wavelength optical dipole trap
• Universal three-body parameter in ultracold 4He*
• Efimov States of Heavy Impurities in a Bose-Einstein Condensate
• Fermi-Bose mixture in mixed dimensions
• Few-body Physics in a Many-body World
• Ultracold mixtures of metastable He and Rb: scattering lengths from ab initio calculations and thermalization measurements
• Quantum-State Controlled Penning Ionization Reactions between Ultracold Alkali and Metastable Helium Atoms
• Non-exponential one-body loss in a Bose-Einstein condensate
• An ultracold, optically trapped mixture of {87}Rb and metastable {4}He atoms
• Close-coupled model of Feshbach resonances in ultracold ${}^3$He* and ${}^4$He* atomic Collisions
• Spectral flow of trimer states of two heavy impurities and one light condensed boson
• Long-range states in excited ultracold 3He*-4He* dimers