Thermalization of magnetically trapped metastable helium

Abstract

We have observed thermalization by elastic collisions of magnetically trapped metastable helium atoms. Our method directly samples the reconstruction of a thermal energy distribution after the application of an RF knife. The relaxation time of our sample towards equilibrium gives an elastic collision rate constant close to the unitarity limit.

4 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Bose-Einstein Condensation of Atomic Hydrogen
• Penning collisions of laser-cooled metastable helium atoms

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Cold and trapped metastable noble gases
• Light-shift tomography in an optical-dipole trap for neutral atoms
• Ionization rates in a Bose-Einstein condensate of metastable Helium
• Fast production of Bose-Einstein condensates of metastable Helium
• An oscillator circuit to produce a radio-frequency discharge and application to metastable helium saturated absorption spectroscopy
• Ultracold homonuclear and heteronuclear collisions in metastable helium