Journal
NEW JOURNAL OF PHYSICS
Volume 17, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/17/3/035005
Keywords
Zeeman deceleration; metastable helium; cold atoms and molecules
Categories
Funding
- Chemical Industry Fund (FCI, Germany) through a Kekule Mobility Fellowship
- Chemical Industry Fund (FCI, Germany) through Simms Foundation (Merton College, Oxford, UK)
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UK) EPSRC(GB) [EP/G00224X/1, EP/1029109]
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [EP/G00224X/1, EP/I029109/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- EPSRC [EP/G00224X/1, EP/I029109/1] Funding Source: UKRI
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We present experimental results that demonstrate-for the first time-the Zeeman deceleration of helium atoms in the metastable 2(3)S(1) state. A more than 40% decrease of the kinetic energy of the beam is achieved for deceleration from 490 m s(-1) to a final velocity of 370 m s(-1). Metastable atom generation is achieved with an electron-impact-excitation source whose performance is enhanced through an additional discharge-type process which we characterize in detail. Metastable helium is efficiently generated even in a mixture of other noble gases that have much lower excitation energies. Comparison of deceleration data at different electron beam pulse durations confirms that a matching between the initial particle distribution and the phase-space acceptance of the decelerator is crucial for the production of a decelerated packet with a well-defined velocity distribution. The experimental findings are in good agreement with three-dimensional numerical particle trajectory simulations.
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