Physical Review A
Evaporative cooling of metastable helium in the multi-partial-wave regime
Scott V. Nguyen, S. Charles Doret, Colin B. Connolly, R. A. Michniak, Wolfgang Ketterle, John M. Doyle
Abstract
Metastable helium is buffer gas cooled, magnetically trapped, and evaporatively cooled in large numbers. ${10}^{11}$ $^{4}\mathrm{He}^{*}$ atoms are trapped at an initial temperature of $400\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{mK}$ and evaporatively cooled into the ultracold regime, resulting in a cloud of $2\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{9}$ atoms at $1.4\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.2\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{mK}$. Efficient evaporation indicates low collisional loss for $^{4}\mathrm{He}^{*}$ in both the ultracold and multi-partial-wave regime, in agreement with theory.