Understanding one-body losses in magnetically trapped metastable europium atoms

We report the measurement of one-body loss rates for magnetically trapped metastable europium atoms and the study of their loss mechanism. The loss of atoms observed in a magneto-optical trap is not fully understood because of the indivisibility of the loss regarding optical pumpings due to the presence of cooling laser beams. We magnetically trapped the atoms by directly loading from the magneto-optical trap and observed almost identical one-body loss rates of approximately 2.6 s(-1) for two isotopes: Eu-151 and Eu-153. Our rate-equation-based model, combined with loss rate measurements carried out with repumpers, shows that blackbody radiation at room temperature drives E1 transitions and induces the observed losses.

Automated summary

By directly loading atoms from the magneto-optical trap and using a rate-equation-based model combined with repumpers, we identified that blackbody radiation at room temperature drives E1 transitions and induces the observed losses in the metastable europium atoms trapped magnetically.