Eur. Phys. J. D 19, 103-109 (2002)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e20020061

Production of a Bose Einstein condensate of metastable helium atoms

¹ Collège de France and 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 Universität Hannover, Welfengarten 1, 30167 Hannover, Germany
⁴ TIFR, Homi Bhabha Road, Mumbai 400005, India

Corresponding author: ^a franck.pereira-dos-santos@lkb.ens.fr

Received: 15 October 2001
Published online: 15 April 2002

Abstract

We recently observed a Bose-Einstein condensate in a dilute gas of ⁴He in the 2³S₁ metastable state. In this article, we describe the successive experimental steps which led to the Bose-Einstein transition at 4.7 μK: loading of a large number of atoms in a MOT, efficient transfer into a magnetic Ioffé-Pritchard trap, and optimization of the evaporative cooling ramp. Quantitative measurements are also given for the rates of elastic and inelastic collisions, both above and below the transition.