Robert A, Sirjean O, Browaeys A, Poupard J, Nowak S, Boiron D, Westbrook C I, Aspect A
Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique, UMR 8501 du CNRS, Bâtiment 503, Campus Universitaire d'Orsay, Boite Postale 147, F-91403 Orsay Cedex, France.
Science. 2001 Apr 20;292(5516):461-4. doi: 10.1126/science.1060622. Epub 2001 Mar 22.
We report the realization of a Bose-Einstein condensate of metastable atoms (helium in the lowest triplet state). The excitation energy of each atom with respect to the ground state is 20 electron volts, but inelastic processes that would destroy the sample are suppressed strongly enough in a spin-polarized sample to allow condensation. Our detection scheme takes advantage of the metastability to achieve detection of individual atoms as well as of the decay products of inelastic processes. This detection opens the way toward new studies in mesoscopic quantum statistical physics, as well as in atomic quantum optics.
我们报告了亚稳态原子（处于最低三重态的氦）的玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚的实现。每个原子相对于基态的激发能为20电子伏特，但在自旋极化样品中，足以强烈抑制会破坏样品的非弹性过程，从而实现凝聚。我们的检测方案利用了这种亚稳态，实现了对单个原子以及非弹性过程衰变产物的检测。这种检测为介观量子统计物理以及原子量子光学的新研究开辟了道路。
