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Originally published in Science Express on 22 March 2001
Science 20 April 2001:
Vol. 292. no. 5516, pp. 461 - 464
DOI: 10.1126/science.1060622
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Research Articles

A Bose-Einstein Condensate of Metastable Atoms

A. Robert, O. Sirjean, A. Browaeys,* J. Poupard,dagger S. Nowak,ddagger D. Boiron, C. I. Westbrook, A. Aspect§

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 electron volts, 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 of 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.

Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique, UMR 8501 du CNRS, Bâtiment 503, Campus Universitaire d'Orsay, Boîte Postale 147, F-91403 Orsay Cedex, France.
*   Present address: Laser Cooling and Trapping Group, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA.

dagger    Present address: R&D Laboratory, GN NETTEST Photonics, Boîte Postale 39, F-78160, Marly le Roi, France.

ddagger    Present address: Bayer Central Research Laboratory, D-51368 Leverkusen, Germany.

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

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