2010/03/31 by N. Brahms, Nathan Brahms, T. V. Tscherbul +11
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #physics.atm-clus #physics.atom-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.105.033001
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 033001 (2010) · 4 pages, 4 figures
openalex publication_date 2010/07/16 · arxiv created 2011/04/28 · arxiv updated 2011/04/29 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We predict that a large class of helium-containing cold polar molecules form readily in a cryogenic buffer gas, achieving densities as high as 10(12) cm(-3). We explore the spin relaxation of these molecules in buffer-gas-loaded magnetic traps and identify a loss mechanism based on Landau-Zener transitions arising from the anisotropic hyperfine interaction. Our results show that the recently observed strong T(-6) thermal dependence of the spin-change rate of silver (Ag) trapped in dense (3)He is accounted for by the formation and spin change of Ag(3)He van der Waals molecules, thus providing indirect evidence for molecular formation in a buffer-gas trap.