Sympathetic cooling of fluorine atoms with ultracold atomic hydrogen

Abstract

We consider the prospect of using ultracold hydrogen atoms for sympathetic cooling of fluorine atoms to microkelvin temperatures. We carry out quantum-mechanical calculations on collisions between cold F and H atoms in magnetically trappable states and show that the ratio of elastic to inelastic cross sections remains high across a wide range of temperatures and magnetic fields. For F atoms initially in the spin-stretched state (${}^2$P${}_{3/2}$, $f=m_f=+2$), sympathetic cooling appears likely to succeed from starting temperatures around 1 K or even higher. This occurs because inelastic collisions are suppressed by p-wave and d-wave barriers that are 600 mK and 3.2 K high, respectively. In combination with recent results on H + NH and H + OH collisions [M. L. González-Mart\'ınez and J. M. Hutson, arXiv:1305.6282 (2013)], this establishes ultracold H atoms as a very promising and versatile coolant for atoms and molecules that cannot be laser-cooled.

11 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Ultracold atom-molecule collisions and bound states in magnetic fields: tuning zero-energy Feshbach resonances in He-NH (3Sigma-)
• The prospects of forming ultracold molecules in ${}^2\Sigma$ states by magnetoassociation of alkali-metal atoms with Yb
• Towards magnetic slowing of atoms and molecules
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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Low-temperature thermodynamics with quantum coherence
• Statistical product distributions for ultracold reactions in external fields
• Magnetically tunable Feshbach resonances in Li+Er
• Magnetic Trapping of Cold Bromine Atoms
• Prospects of forming high-spin polar molecules from ultracold atoms
• Quantum chaos in Feshbach resonances of the ErYb system
• Feshbach resonances and molecule formation in ultracold mixtures of Rb and Yb(${}^3$P) atoms