https://doi.org/10.1007/s100530170228
Penning collisions of laser-cooled metastable helium atoms
1
Laboratoire Kastler Brossel (Unité de Recherche de l'École Normale Supérieure et de l'Université Pierre et Marie Curie, associée au CNRS (UMR 8552).) , Département de Physique de l'École Normale Supérieure, 24 rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France
2
Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers (UMR 7538 du CNRS) , Université Paris-Nord, avenue J.B. Clément, 93430 Villetaneuse, France
3
Dept. of Physics, Univ. of Perugia, Via Pascoli, Perugia, Italy
4
Lens and INFM, L.go E. Fermi 2, Firenze, Italy
5
Universitt Hannover, Welfengarten 1, 30167 Hannover, Germany
6
TIFR, Homi Bhabha Road, Mumbai 400005, India
Corresponding author: a franck.pereira-dos-santos@lkb.ens.fr
Received:
8
September
2000
Revised:
19
December
2000
Published online: 15 April 2001
We present experimental results on the two-body loss rates in a magneto-optical trap of
metastable helium atoms. Absolute rates are measured in a systematic way for several laser
detunings ranging from -5 to -30 MHz and at different intensities, by monitoring the decay of
the trap fluorescence. The dependence of the two-body loss rate coefficient β on the
excited state (
) and metastable state (
) populations is also investigated. From these results we infer a rather uniform rate constant 
cm3/s.
PACS: 32.80.Pj – Optical cooling of atoms; trapping / 34.50.Rk – Laser-modified scattering and reactions
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 2001
