Spin-dipole induced lifetime of the least-bound quintet sigma state of He(2S)+He(2S)

Abstract

The properties of the least-bound vibrational level (v=14) of the quintet sigma state formed during the ultracold collision of two spin-polarized metastable helium atoms are crucial to studies of photoassociation spectroscopy of metastable helium. We report a calculation of the autoionization lifetime of this state induced by spin-dipole coupling of the quintet sigma state to the singlet sigma state from which Penning and associative ionization processes are highly probable. We find a lifetime of about 150 microseconds, significantly larger than the recent experimental estimates of (4-5) microseconds.

arXiv commentREVTEX4, four double-column pages

References in corpus (6)

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Cited by in corpus (6)

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• Laser Intensity Dependence of Photoassociation in Ultracold Metastable Helium
• Close-coupled model of Feshbach resonances in ultracold ${}^3$He* and ${}^4$He* atomic Collisions
• Autoionization of spin-polarized metastable helium in tight anisotropic harmonic traps
• Ultracold homonuclear and heteronuclear collisions in metastable helium