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Published Online March 22, 2001
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1060622

Research Articles

Submitted on March 12, 2001
Accepted on March 16, 2001

A Bose-Einstein Condensate of Metastable Atoms

A. Robert 1, O. Sirjean 1, A. Browaeys 2, J. Poupard 3, S. Nowak 4, D. Boiron 1, C. I. Westbrook 1, A. Aspect 1*

1 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique, UMR 8501 du CNRS, Bâtiment 503, Campus Universitaire d'Orsay, B.P. 147, F-91403 Orsay Cedex, France.
2 Laser Cooling and Trapping Group, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA; Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique, UMR 8501 du CNRS, Bâtiment 503, Campus Universitaire d'Orsay, B.P. 147, F-91403 Orsay Cedex, France.
3 R&D Laboratory, GN NETTEST Photonics, BP 39, F-78160, Marly le Roi, France; Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique, UMR 8501 du CNRS, Bâtiment 503, Campus Universitaire d'Orsay, B.P. 147, F-91403 Orsay Cedex, France.
4 Bayer Central Research Laboratory, D-51368 Leverkusen, Germany; Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique, UMR 8501 du CNRS, Bâtiment 503, Campus Universitaire d'Orsay, B.P. 147, F-91403 Orsay Cedex, France.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: alain.aspect{at}iota.u-psud.fr.

We report the realization of a Bose-Einstein condensate of metastable atoms (helium in the lowest triplet state). The excitation energy of each atom with respect to the ground state is 20 eV, but inelastic processes that would destroy the sample are suppressed strongly enough in a spin-polarized sample to allow condensation. Our detection scheme takes advantage of the metastability to achieve detection of individual atoms as well as the decay products of inelastic processes. This detection opens the way toward new studies in mesoscopic quantum statistical physics, as well as in atomic quantum optics.


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)