Laser-Induced Ionizing Collisions of Ultracold Krypton Gas in the 1s5 Metastable State
Hidetoshi Katori, Fujio Shimizu
The line shape of laser-induced ionizing collisions of ultracold Kr gas is investigated near the ${1s}_{5}[4p^{5}5s:^{3}P_{2}]$ and ${2p}_{9}[4p^{5}5p:^{3}D_{3}]$ transition. The rate increases several times when the laser is red tuned by a few times of the natural width, while it sharply decreases for a slight blue detuning. This frequency dependence of the collision rate is due to the collision dynamics characteristic of ultracold atoms in a near-resonant light. Our experimental results on metastable Kr atoms show a good qualitative agreement with semiclassical Monte Carlo simulation of the cold collision dynamics.
Physical Review Letters•Nov 7, 1994•58 citations