On the feasibility of cooling and trapping metastable alkaline-earth atoms

Abstract

Metastability and long-range interactions of Mg, Ca, and Sr in the lowest-energy metastable ${}^3{P}_2$ state are investigated. The calculated lifetimes are 38 minutes for Mg*, 118 minutes for Ca*, and 17 minutes for Sr*, supporting feasibility of cooling and trapping experiments. The quadrupole-quadrupole long-range interactions of two metastable atoms are evaluated for various molecular symmetries. Hund's case (c) 4_g potential possesses a large 100-1000 K potential barrier. Therefore magnetic trap losses can possibly be reduced using cold metastable atoms in a stretched M=2 state. Calculations were performed in the framework of ab initio relativistic configuration interaction method coupled with the random-phase approximation.

8 pages, 2 figures; to appear in PRL

References in corpus (1)

• Long-range interaction of two metastable rare-gas atoms

Cited by in corpus (36)

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• Narrow Line Cooling and Momentum-Space Crystals
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• Ultracold collision properties of metastable alkaline-earth atoms
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• Quantum computing with magnetically interacting atoms
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• Repumping and spectroscopy of laser-cooled Sr atoms using the (5s5p)3P2 - (5s4d)3D2 transition
• Quantum phases of quadrupolar Fermi gases in optical lattices
• Lattice solitons with quadrupolar intersite interactions
• Improved magneto-optical trapping of Ca
• Detecting quadrupole interactions in ultracold Fermi gases
• Coherent excitation of a $\mu$Hz scale optical magnetic quadrupole transition
• Transition rates and radiative lifetimes of Ca I
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• Engineering quantum control with twisted-light fields induced optical transitions
• Excitation-assisted nonadiabatic charge-transfer reaction in a mixed atom-ion system
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• Limitation of single-repumping schemes for laser cooling of Sr atoms
• Two-photon cooling of calcium atoms
• Direct Measurement of the $5s5p{}^1{P}_1\to 5s4d{}^1{D}_2$ Decay Rate in Strontium
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• Low-energy scatterings and pseudopotential of polarized quadrupoles