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Thermalization of magnetically trapped metastable helium

A. Browaeys, A. Robert, O. Sirjean, J. Poupard, S. Nowak, D. Boiron, C. I. Westbrook, A. Aspect

physics.atom-pharXiv:physics/0102068

Abstract

We have observed thermalization by elastic collisions of magnetically trapped metastable helium atoms. Our method directly samples the reconstruction of a thermal energy distribution after the application of an RF knife. The relaxation time of our sample towards equilibrium gives an elastic collision rate constant close to the unitarity limit.

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