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arXiv:1110.1361 · Reviews of Modern Physics

Cold and trapped metastable noble gases

W. Vassen, Claude N. Cohen-Tannoudji, Michèle Leduc, Denis Boiron, Christoph Ira Westbrook, Andrew G. Truscott, K. G. H. Baldwin, G. Birkl, Pablo Cancio, Marek Trippenbach

Published Feb 24, 2012• 145 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Experimental work on cold, trapped metastable noble gases is reviewed. The aspects which distinguish work with these atoms from the large body of work on cold, trapped atoms in general is emphasized. These aspects include detection techniques and collision processes unique to metastable atoms. Several experiments exploiting these unique features in fields including atom optics and statistical physics are described. Precision measurements on these atoms including fine structure splittings, isotope shifts, and atomic lifetimes are also discussed.

DOI
10.1103/revmodphys.84.175

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Experimental work on cold, trapped metastable noble gases is reviewed. The aspects which distinguish work with these atoms from the large body of work on cold, trapped atoms in general is emphasized. These aspects include detection techniques and collision processes unique to metastable atoms. Several experiments exploiting these unique features in fields including atom optics and statistical physics are described. Precision measurements on these atoms including fine structure splittings, isotope shifts, and atomic lifetimes are also discussed.
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Summary form only given. Techniques for cooling and trapping atoms now provide unique capabilities for the manipulation of atoms. In particular, they make possible very low temperatures, extraordinarily high atomic phase space densities, and long perturbation-free observation times. These capabilities enable one to carry out many new measurements on atoms with great precision and/or in entirely new regimes of temperature and density. This tutorial will concentrate primarily on the practical aspects of how to apply current laser cooling and trapping techniques. This will include descriptions of the various techniques and their capabilities, as well as a discussion of tradeoffs between price, complexity, and various performance parameters. Finally, I will briefly discuss how these techniques are applied in a number of specific cases including cold collisions, precision measurements including atomic clocks, atom interferometry, collecting radioactive isotopes, and the creation of Bose-Einstein condensates.
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During the last decades the study of cold atoms has grown in a great measure. Research in this field has been made possible due to the development of laser cooling and trapping techniques. We use laser cooling to cool helium atoms down to a temperature of 1 mK and we are able to trap 106 atoms in our magneto-optical trap. The helium atoms are in a metastable state, the He 23S1 state, which has a lifetime of more than 2 hours. With cold atoms phenomena can be studied that are not accessible using thermal atoms, such as high resolution spectroscopy. Furthermore cold atoms are the first step towards Bose-Einstein condensation. Cold alkali-metal atoms have been extensively studied, using photoassociation spectroscopy. In this thesis the first photoassociation results for rare gas atoms, namely metastable helium atoms will be discussed. Various experiments are described and an analysis of the results is given.
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