Bose-Einstein condensation of metastable helium: some experimental aspects
C. I. Westbrook, A. Robert, O. Sirjean, A. Browaeys, D. Boiron, A. Aspect
Abstract
We describe our recent realization of BEC using metastable helium. All detection is done with a micruchannel plate which detects the metastables or ions coming from the trapped atom cloud. This discussion emphasizes some of the diagnostic experiments which were necessary to quantitatively analyse our results.