We present progress towards measurements of total absolute collision cross sections of the 3P2 metastable state and the 3D3 excited state of neon with ground state noble gases utilizing a metastable neon magneto optical trap. The measurement is achieved by observing the decay rate of the trap as a function of added partial pressure of a noble gas. This technique will enable benchmark cross sections to be measured there by providing stringent tests of current quantum mechanical scattering calculations.
We perform spectroscopy on the optical dipole transitions
5s5p3P2−−5snd3D1,2,3, $n\ensuremath{\in}(5,6)$, for all stable isotopes of atomic strontium. We develop a spectroscopy scheme in which atoms in the metastable
3P2 state are stored in a reservoir before being probed. The method presented here increases the attained precision and accuracy by two orders of magnitude compared to similar experiments performed in a magneto-optical trap or discharge. We show how the state distribution and velocity spread of atoms in the reservoir can be tailored to increase the spectroscopy performance. The absolute transition frequencies are measured with an accuracy of 5 MHz. The isotope shifts are given to within 200 kHz. We calculate the
A and
Q parameters for the hyperfine structure of the fermionic isotope at the MHz level. Furthermore, we investigate the branching ratios of the
3DJ states into the
3PJ states and discuss immediate implications on schemes of optical pumping and fluorescence detection.