Laser cooling and trapping of metastable helium atoms

Abstract

Applications of laser cooling techniques have led to atomic traps, fountains, funnels, atomic interferometry and mirrors. In 1995 Cornell and co-workers succeeded in cooling rubidium atoms with de Broglie wavelengths comparable to the interatomic separations in a gas and created a Bose condensate in a weakly interacting gas. In the present paper cooling and trapping of metastable helium atoms is presented.