Suppression of Penning ionization in a spin-polarized mixture of rubidium and He

L. J. Byron, R. G. Dall, Wu Rugway, A. G. Truscott

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    16 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    This paper presents the first study of the collision dynamics of an ultra-cold spin-polarized mixture of rubidium and metastable helium (He*) atoms. Our experiment monitors ion production from the mixture for both magnetically polarized and unpolarized cases. In the unpolarized case, we observe an increase in our background ion rate. However, in the completely polarized sample the ion production is below the sensitivity of our experiment. Nonetheless, we determine an upper limit of 5 × 10-12 cm 3 s-1 for the polarized rate constant (β Rb-He*), which is two orders of magnitude below the unpolarized rate constant. Such a suppression of the He*-87Rb polarized rate was not apparent a priori and opens the intriguing possibility of creating a dual Bose-Einstein condensate comprising an alkali ground-state atom and an excited-state noblegas atom.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number013004
    JournalNew Journal of Physics
    Volume12
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 13 Jan 2010

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Suppression of Penning ionization in a spin-polarized mixture of rubidium and He'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this