Creating ultracold molecules by collisions with ultracold rare gas atoms in an optical trap
Abstract
We study collisions of para-H2 with five rare gas atomic species (He, Ne, Ar, Kr and Xe) over the range from 1 K to 1 μ K and evaluate the feasibility of sympathetic cooling H2 with ultracold ground state rare gas atoms co-trapped within a deep optical trap. Collision cross-sections over this large temperature range show that all of these species could be used to cool H2 to ultracold temperatures and that argon and helium are the most promising species for future experiments.
0