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Journal of Physics B Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics

Metastable oxygen atom detection using rare gas matrices

W. Kedzierski, Elly Blejdea, A DiCarlo, J. William McConkey

Published Apr 6, 2010• 6 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The use of solid rare gas matrices as detectors of metastable oxygen atoms is investigated. A 100 eV electron beam colliding with N 2 O target gas is used as the source of O( 1 S). The parameters considered are surface temperature, time delay of excimer emission and spectral response to O( 1 S). In all cases, detector sensitivity maximized at temperatures ⩽20 K. Krypton was found to provide the most sensitive surface and neon the least.

DOI
10.1088/0953-4075/43/8/085204

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The use of solid rare gas matrices as detectors of metastable oxygen atoms is investigated. A 100 eV electron beam colliding with N 2 O target gas is used as the source of O( 1 S). The parameters considered are surface temperature, time delay of excimer emission and spectral response to O( 1 S). In all cases, detector sensitivity maximized at temperatures ⩽20 K. Krypton was found to provide the most sensitive surface and neon the least.
A time-of-flight, atomic-beam magnetic-resonance method was used to compare the gJ{g}_{J}gJ​ factor of 2p33s5S22{p}^{3}3s^{5}S_{2}2p33s5S2​ atomic oxygen with the gJ{g}_{J}gJ​ factor of metastable 23S12^{3}S_{1}23S1​ atomic helium in magnetic fields of 3209 and 4228 G. The metastable oxygen and helium atoms were produced in a pulsed radio-frequency discharge source and after traversing the apparatus were detected by electron emission from a tungsten surface. By collecting data only in a given interval of the time-of-flight distribution the O(5S)\mathrm{O}(^{5}S)O(5S) and He(3S)\mathrm{He}(^{3}S)He(3S) states were isolated from other discharge products. From 158 pairs of resonances taken with four relative field and hairpin orientations the atomic magnetic ggg factor is ${g}_{J}(^{5}S_{2}, ^{16}\mathrm{O})=\frac{{\ensuremath{\mu}}_{J}}{J}=\ensuremath{-}2.0020910(10)$.
Rare-gas atoms are diffracted from nanostructured silicon nitride transmission gratings. From the relative intensities of the diffraction maxima the strength of the van der Waals potential between the atoms and the grating bars is inferred. The method is set out theoretically and is validated with the help of several sets of experimental data. The atom-surface potential of metastable helium and -neon is accurately measured for the first time. The atom-optical method is shown to bear a high potential for new versatile and even more accurate measurements of atom-surface potentials.
A scheme for the detection of cold metastable atoms at surfaces with spatial and temporal resolution is studied experimentally, using methods of laser cooling and atom optics. Electron emission yields for deexcitation of the metastable states 1s5(J=2) and 1s3(J=0) of argon at a gold surface are compared with a technique that is based on optical pumping and the use of an evanescent-wave atom mirror as an internal-state filter, and are found to agree to within an uncertainty of 10%. The application of the detection scheme to time-of-flight spectroscopy of cold atom clouds is demonstrated. The detector has a field of view of 3 mm diameter, a spatial resolution of order 100 μm, and a time resolution of 20 μs, and the single-atom detection efficiency near the center of the field of view is 14% in the linear counting regime of up to 106 atoms/s.
A room-temperature beam of krypton atoms in the metastable 5s[3/2]2 level is demonstrated via an optical excitation method. A Kr-discharge lamp is used to produce vacuum ultraviolet photons at 124 nm for the first-step excitation from the ground level 4p6 1S0 to the 5s[3/2]1 level. An 819 nm Ti:sapphire laser is used for the second-step excitation from 5s[3/2]1 to 5s[3/2]2 followed by a spontaneous decay to the 5s[3/2]2 metastable level. A metastable atomic beam with an angular flux density of 3 x 10(14) s(-1) sr(-1) is achieved at the total gas flow rate of 0.01 cm3/s at STP (or 3 x 10(17) at./s). The dependences of the flux on the gas flow rate, laser power, and lamp parameters are investigated.
The key features of the cross sections for electron-impact excitation out of the ground levels of the rare-gas atoms are summarized and application of these cross section data is shown. This is followed by discussions of recent experiments on determination of electron-impact cross sections for excitation out of the metastable levels of He and Ar. The metastiable atom targets are produced by two different methods, i.e., hollow-cathode discharges and charge-exchange collisions of rare-gas ions with Cs atoms. The former method is simple but is limited to low electron energies because of the very small metastable concentration, whereas the latter method yields a fast target beam with predominantly metastable atoms allowing measurements up to the keV range. The measured cross sections show features very different from those of excitation out of the ground levels. Another new development in electron-atom collision is the use of atom traps for measuring ionization cross sections. The experiment is conducted by passing an electron beam pulse through magneto-optically trapped Rb atoms while the trap is momentarily turned off. Turning the trap back on immediately after the electron beam pulse recaptures the unionized atoms allowing only the ions to escape. The ionization cross section is determined bymore » measuring the electron beam current density at the trapped atom region and the fractional loss of trapped atoms due to the electron beam. This method avoids measurements of the absolute number of the target atoms and the overlap between the atomic and electron beams and therefore eliminates the major sources of uncertainty associated with the crossed-beam method for measuring ionization cross section.« less
We have used a commercial RF ion-source to extract a beam of metastable neon atoms. The source was easily incorporated into our existing system and was operative within a day of installation. The metastable velocity distribution, flux, flow, and efficiency were investigated for different RF powers and pressures, and an optimum was found at a flux density of 2 × 10 12 atoms/s/sr. To obtain an accurate measurement of the amount of metastable atoms leaving the source, we insert a Faraday cup in the beam line and quench some of them using a weak 633 nm laser beam. In order to determine how much of the beam was quenched before reaching our detector, we devised a simple model for the quenching transition and investigated it for different laser powers. This detection method can be easily adapted to other noble gas atoms.