Precision measurement of the metastable3P2lifetime of neon

Abstract

The lifetime of the metastable 3 P2 state of neon has been determined to 14.70(13) s (decay rate 0.06801(62) s −1 ) by measuring the decay in fluorescence of an ensemble of 20 Ne atoms trapped in a magneto-optical trap (MOT). Due to low background gas pressure (p < 5 × 10 −11 mbar) and low relative excitation to the 3 D3 state (0.5 % excitation probability) operation only small corrections have to be included in the lifetime extrapolation. Together with a careful analysis of residual loss mechanisms in the MOT a lifetime determination to high precision is achieved.PACS numbers: 32.70. Cs, 32.70.Fw, 32.80.Pj In contrast to its importance for various active fields of research covering such a wide range as atomic physics, quantum optics, and nuclear physics, there still has been no measurement of the natural lifetime of the metastable 3 P 2 state [1] of neon with sufficient precision. A selection of research activities profiting from an improved measurement include the quest for Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of metastable neon, advanced atomic structure calculations, the investigation of ultracold collisions, and even precision tests of the electroweak theory being currently persued by investigating the nuclear decay of an optically trapped sample of 19 Ne in the 3 P 2 state [2].Ongoing research directed towards BEC of metastable neon atoms in the 3 P 2 state [3, 4] clearly will benefit from an accurate knowledge of the state's lifetime. This includes the optimization of the production process as well as the study of collision processes such as Penningionization [5] and elastic s-wave scattering. Exciting new physics complementing the work on metastable helium [6,7] can be expected for a 3 P 2 neon condensate. We would like to point out the study of higher-order correlations [8] and the intriguing possibility of a modification of the 3 P 2 decay rate due to the high phase-space density or the phase coherence in a BEC [9].Significant advance in atomic structure calculations has already been and will be further triggered [10] by the work presented here. To date only a preliminary experimental value of 22 s for the 3 P 2 lifetime of neon exists [11] with no detailed investigations having been performed [12]. A precise determination of the lifetime will put a more stringent test on theory. For most rare-gas atoms, the 3 P 2 lifetime depends sensitively on electron correlations and relativistic corrections. The latter have only a minor effect for the case of neon, making neon specifically interesting for a critcal test of electron correlations. In addition, our measurement will close the chain of 3 P 2 lifetime measurements for rare-gas atoms beyond helium performed in recent years for Ar ( input for a detailed systematic investigation of the Zdependence of metastable lifetimes. An accurate experimental determination of the 3 P 2 lifetimes of rare-gas atoms other than helium has only been achievable by the ability to prepare cold atom samples in a MOT [11,13,14,15]. For a precision lifetime measurement, the coupli...

Theoretical investigation of magnetic-field-induced2p53s3P0,2Li1, Grumer2, Li3 et al. 2013Phys. Rev. A202220View full textAdd to dashboardCite

“…The theoretical value [9] τ = 17.63 s differs from the measurement [22] 14.73 s by 20%, which is much larger than the uncertainties in both theory and experiment. Therefore, we investigate the effect of an external magnetic field on the lifetime of this level.…”

Heteronuclear collisions between laser-cooled metastable neon atoms

“…In our experiment [3,21], neon atoms are excited to the metastable 3 P 2 state in a dc discharge, then optically collimated, Zeeman decelerated, and captured in a magnetooptical trap. For laser cooling, the transition 3 P 2 ↔ 3 D 3 at 640.4 nm is used.…”

“…With lifetimes ranging from 14.73 s (neon) [3] to 7870 s (helium) [4], the first excited metastable states present effective ground states for applying standard laser cooling techniques. The resulting extremely low kinetic energy of the laser-cooled atoms (≈ 10 −10 eV) stands in strong contrast to the high internal energy between 8 eV (xenon) and 20 eV (helium).…”

Collisional Properties of Cold Spin-Polarized Metastable Neon Atoms

“…We have no signature of higher order loss processes in our measurements. One-body losses with rate are mainly caused by the 14.73 s lifetime of the 3 P 2 state [19] and by background gas collisions. Two-body losses depend on the probability of two atoms to collide [/n 2 r] and on the loss parameter .…”