Zeeman deceleration of electron-impact-excited metastable helium atoms

Abstract

We present experimental results that demonstrate - for the first time - the Zeeman deceleration of helium atoms in the metastable 2^3S_1state. A more than 40% decrease of the kinetic energy of the beam is achieved for deceleration from 490 m/s to a final velocity of 370 m/s. Metastable atom generation is achieved with an electron-impact-excitation source whose performance is enhanced through an additional discharge-type process which we characterize in detail. Comparison of deceleration data at different electron beam pulse durations confirms that a matching between the initial particle distribution and the phase-space acceptance of the decelerator is crucial for the production of a decelerated packet with a well-defined velocity distribution. The experimental findings are in good agreement with three-dimensional numerical particle trajectory simulations.

References in corpus (4)

• Observation of Quantum Effects in sub Kelvin Cold Reactions
• Stopping supersonic oxygen with a series of pulsed electromagnetic coils: A molecular coilgun
• Dynamics of gas phase Ne${}^{\ast }$ + NH${}_3$ and Ne${}^{\ast }$ + ND${}_3$ Penning ionization at low temperatures
• Model for the overall phase-space acceptance in a Zeeman decelerator

Cited by in corpus (2)

• A New Design for a Traveling-Wave Zeeman Decelerator: I. Theory
• Preparation of individual magnetic sub-levels of ${}^4$He($2^3$S${}_1$) in a supersonic beam using laser optical pumping and magnetic hexapole focusing