Collisional properties of trapped cold chromium atoms

Abstract

We report on calculations of the elastic cross section and thermalization rate for collision between two maximally spin-polarized chromium atoms in the cold and ultracold regimes, relevant to buffer-gas and magneto-optical cooling of chromium atoms. We calculate ab initio potential energy curves for Cr2 and the van der Waals coefficient C6, and construct interaction potentials between two colliding Cr atoms. We explore the effect of shape resonances on elastic cross section, and find that they dramatically affect the thermalization rate. Our calculated value for the s-wave scattering length is compared in magnitude with a recent measurement at ultracold temperatures.

revtex4, 5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Bose-Einstein condensation in trapped dipolar gases
• Tuning the dipolar interaction in quantum gases
• Ultracold dipolar gases - a challenge for experiments and theory
• Continuous loading of a magnetic trap
• Determination of the s-wave Scattering Length of Chromium

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Dipolar physics: A review of experiments with magnetic quantum gases
• Observation of Feshbach resonances in an ultracold gas of ${}^{52}$Cr
• Bose-Einstein Condensation of Europium
• Prospects for ultracold polar and magnetic chromium-closed-shell-atom molecules
• Low energy universality and scaling of Van der Waals forces
• CrRb: a molecule with large magnetic and electric dipole moments
• Photoassociation of spin polarized Chromium
• Instability of the Body-Centered Cubic Lattice within the Sticky Hard Sphere and Lennard-Jones Model obtained from Exact Lattice Summations