Beams, T.J., Peach, G., and Whittingham, I.B. (2004) Ultracold atomic collisions in tight harmonic traps: perturbation theory, ionization losses and application to metastable helium atoms. Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, 37 (22). pp. 4561-4570.

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Abstract

Collisions between tightly confined atoms can lead to ionization and hence to loss of atoms from the trap. We develop second-order perturbation theory for a tensorial perturbation of a spherically symmetric system and the theory is then applied to processes mediated by the spin–dipole interaction. Redistribution and loss mechanisms are studied for the case of spin-polarized metastable helium atoms and results obtained for the five lowest s states in the trap and trapping frequencies ranging from 1 kHz to 10 MHz.

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