1110.1361 (Wim Null Vassen et al.)

Cold and trapped metastable noble gases    [PDF]

Wim Null Vassen, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Michèle Leduc, Denis Boiron, Christoph I Westbrook, Andrew Truscott, Ken Baldwin, Gerhard Birkl, Pablo Cancio, Marek Trippenbach

We review experimental and theoretical work on cold, trapped metastable noble gases. We em- phasize the aspects which distinguish work with these atoms from the large body of work on cold, trapped atoms in general. These aspects include detection techniques and collision processes unique to metastable atoms. We describe several experiments exploiting these unique features in fields including atom optics and statistical physics. We also discuss precision measurements on these atoms including fine structure splittings, isotope shifts, and atomic lifetimes.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1361