Optical Quenching of Metastable Helium Atoms using Excitation to the $4P$ State

Jiwen Guan, Vivien Behrendt, Pinrui Shen +5

Discharge and electron-impact excitation lead to the production of metastable helium atoms in two metastable states, 2${}^1$S${}_0$ and 2${}^3$S${}_1$. However, many applications require p…