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Large spin relaxation rates in trapped submerged-shell atoms

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 Added by Colin Connolly
 Publication date 2009
  fields Physics
and research's language is English




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Spin relaxation due to atom-atom collisions is measured for magnetically trapped erbium and thulium atoms at a temperature near 500 mK. The rate constants for Er-Er and Tm-Tm collisions are 3.0 times 10^-10 cm^3 s^-1 and 1.1 times 10^-10 cm^3 s^-1, respectively, 2-3 orders of magnitude larger than those observed for highly magnetic S-state atoms. This is strong evidence for an additional, dominant, spin relaxation mechanism, electrostatic anisotropy, in collisions between these submerged-shell L > 0 atoms. These large spin relaxation rates imply that evaporative cooling of these atoms in a magnetic trap will be highly inefficient.



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Angular momentum changing collisions can be suppressed in atoms whose valence electrons are submerged beneath filled shells of higher principle quantum number. To determine whether spin-exchange collisions are suppressed in these submerged shell atoms, we measured spin-exchange collisions of six hyperfine states of Mn at temperatures below 1 K. Although the 3d valence electrons in Mn are submerged beneath a filled 4s orbital, we find that the spin exchange rate coefficients are similar to those of Na and H (which are non-submerged shell atoms).
We present calculations of spin-relaxation rates of alkali-metal atoms due to the spin-axis interaction acting in binary collisions between the atoms. We show that for the high-temperature conditions of interest here, the spin relaxation rates calculated with classical-path trajectories are nearly the same as those calculated with the distorted-wave Born approximation. We compare these calculations to recent experiments that used magnetic decoupling to isolate spin relaxation due to binary collisions from that due to the formation of triplet van-der-Waals molecules. The values of the spin-axis coupling coefficients deduced from measurements of binary collision rates are consistent with those deduced from molecular decoupling experiments. All the experimental data is consistent with a simple and physically plausible scaling law for the spin-axis coupling coefficients.
We discuss the behaviour of the Larmor frequency shift and the longitudinal relaxation rate due to non-uniform electromagnetic fields on an assembly of spin 1/2 particles, in adiabatic and nonadiabatic regimes. We also show some general relations between the various frequency shifts and between the frequency shifts and relaxation rates. The remarkable feature of all our results is that they were obtained without any specific assumptions on the explicit form of the correlation functions of the fields. Hence, we expect that our results are valid both for diffusive and ballistic regime of motion and arbitrary cell shapes and surface scattering. These results can then be applied to a wide variety of realistic systems.
We demonstrate a double-trap system well suited to study cold collisions between trapped ions and trapped atoms. Using Yb$^+$ ions confined in a Paul trap and Yb atoms in a magneto-optical trap, we investigate charge-exchange collisions of several isotopes for collision energies down to 400 neV (5 mK). The measured rate coefficient of $6 times 10^{-10}$ cm$^{3}$s$^{-1}$, constant over four orders of magnitude in collision energy, is in good agreement with that derived from a semiclassical Langevin model for an atomic polarizability of 143 a.u.
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