Inelastic Collisions in Optically Trapped Ultracold Metastable Ytterbium
Inelastic Collisions in Optically Trapped Ultracold Metastable Ytterbium
We report measurement of inelastic loss in dense and cold metastable ytterbium ($\mathrm{Yb}[^{3}P_{2}]$). Use of an optical far-off-resonance trap enables us to trap atoms in all magnetic sublevels, removing $m$-changing collisional trap loss from the system. Trapped samples of $\mathrm{Yb}[^{3}P_{2}]$ are produced at a density of $2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{13}\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{cm}}^{\ensuremath{-}3}$ and …