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Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 040404 (2003) [4 pages]

Spin-Singlet Bose-Einstein Condensation of Two-Electron Atoms
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Yosuke Takasu, Kenichi Maki, Kaduki Komori, Tetsushi Takano, Kazuhito Honda *, Mitsutaka Kumakura, Tsutomu Yabuzaki, and Yoshiro Takahashi †
Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, Japan 606-8502

Featured in Physics News Update Received 30 April 2003; published 25 July 2003

We report the observation of a Bose-Einstein condensation of ytterbium atoms by evaporative cooling in a novel crossed optical trap. Unlike the previously observed condensates, a ytterbium condensate is a two-electron system in a singlet state and has distinct features such as the extremely narrow intercombination transitions which are ideal for future optical frequency standard and the insensitivity to external magnetic field which is important for precision coherent atom optics, and the existence of the novel metastable triplet states generated by optical excitation from the singlet state.


©2003 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v91/e040404
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.040404
PACS: 03.75.Hh, 05.30.Jp, 32.80.Pj

* Present address: Department of Physics, Tokyo University of Science, Chiba 278-8510, Japan.
† To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email address: yitk@scphys.kyoto-u.ac.jp

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