Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom.
Phys Rev Lett. 2014 Oct 31;113(18):183001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.183001. Epub 2014 Oct 30.
We trap cold, ground state argon atoms in a deep optical dipole trap produced by a buildup cavity. The atoms, which are a general source for the sympathetic cooling of molecules, are loaded in the trap by quenching them from a cloud of laser-cooled metastable argon atoms. Although the ground state atoms cannot be directly probed, we detect them by observing the collisional loss of cotrapped metastable argon atoms and determine an elastic cross section. Using a type of parametric loss spectroscopy we also determine the polarizability of the metastable 4s3/2 state to be (7.3±1.1)×10(-39) C m(2)/V. Finally, Penning and associative losses of metastable atoms in the absence of light assisted collisions, are determined to be (3.3±0.8)×10(-10) cm(3) s(-1).
我们将冷的基态氩原子困在由积累腔产生的深光偶极阱中。这些原子是分子的感生冷却的一般来源，通过从激光冷却的亚稳态氩原子云中猝灭它们而加载到陷阱中。尽管无法直接探测到基态原子，但我们通过观察共捕获的亚稳态氩原子的碰撞损失来检测它们，并确定弹性截面。我们还使用一种参数损失光谱学方法来确定亚稳态 4s3/2态的极化率为 (7.3±1.1)×10(-39) C m(2)/V。最后，在没有光辅助碰撞的情况下，确定亚稳态原子的彭宁和缔合损失为 (3.3±0.8)×10(-10) cm(3) s(-1)。
