Inelastic collisions of optically trapped metastable calcium atoms

Abstract

We study binary collisions of metastable calcium atoms ($^{40}$Ca) in an optical dipole trap. Collisions between $^{3}$P$_{0}$-atoms and between $^{3}$P$_{0}$ and $^{1}$S$_{0}$-atoms are considered. In the former case, the elastic and inelastic collision parameters are found to be $5.4\times 10^{-11}\,\mathrm{cm}^{3}\mathrm{s}^{-1}$ and $3.6\times 10^{-11}\,\mathrm{cm}^{3}\mathrm{s}^{-1}$, respectively. A fraction of the collisions between $^{3}$P$_{0}$-atoms is found to produce cold trapped atoms in the singlet $^{1}$S$_{0}$ state, suggesting that the internal energy for these collisions is dissipated by radiation. For collisions between $^{3}$P$_{0}$ and $^{1}$S$_{0}$-atoms we find a two-body loss parameter of $8.5\times 10^{-11}\,\mathrm{cm}^{3}\mathrm{s}^{-1}$. Our observations show that metastable calcium samples in the $^{3}$P$_{0}$-state are not stable at high densities, as for example required in quantum computing or many-body quantum simulation schemes.