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This study investigates failure mechanisms in a typical thermal barrier coating (TBC) system comprising an EB-PVD columnar top coat, an aluminide bond coat, and a Ni-based single crystal superalloy substrate, simulating gas turbine operating conditions using a burner rig. TBC degradation, initiated by interfacial defects from the LASAT method, was studied during thermal gradient cycling under fast and slow cooling. In-situ optical and infrared imaging, along with ex-situ SEM cross-sectional analysis, monitored failure mechanisms. The Laser Shock for Damage Monitoring (LASDAM) technique provided insights into gradient and cooling rate impacts on columnar TBC damage. Results showed significant effects of cooling rate on delamination and localized failure at blister sites, with LASDAM revealing significant overheating at damage sites. Analysis included full-field temperature and damage assessment, emphasizing blister-driven delamination under severe thermal gradients. Discussion focused on elastic stored energy effects, noting that fast cooling induced transient conditions where reversed temperature gradients increased damage, limiting TBC lifespan, Comment: submitted to Journal of the European Ceramic Society, 24 pages and 19 figures

MAX phases have great potential under demands of both high-temperature and high-stress performance, with their mixed atomic bonding producing the temperature and oxidation resistance of ceramics with the mechanical resilience of metals. Here, we measure the mechanical properties up to 980C by nanoindentation on highly dense and pure Cr$_2$AlC, as well as after oxidation with a burner rig at 1200C for more than 29 hours. Only modest reductions in both hardness and modulus up to 980C were observed, implying no change in deformation mechanism. Furthermore, micro-cantilever fracture tests were carried out at the Cr$_2$AlC/Cr$_7$C$_3$ and Cr$_7$C$_3$/Al$_2$O$_3$ interfaces after the oxidation of the Cr$_2$AlC substrates with said burner rig. The values are typical of ceramic-ceramic interfaces, below 4 MPa/m, leading to the hypothesis that the excellent macroscopic behaviour is due to a combination of low internal strain due to the match in thermal expansion coefficient as well as the convoluted interface.

Improvements in both theory and frequency metrology of few-electron systems such as hydrogen and helium have enabled increasingly sensitive tests of quantum electrodynamics (QED), as well as ever more accurate determinations of fundamental constants and the size of the nucleus. At the same time advances in cooling and trapping of neutral atoms have revolutionized the development of increasingly accurate atomic clocks. Here, we combine these fields to reach the highest precision on an optical tranistion in the helium atom to date by employing a Bose-Einstein condensate confined in a magic wavelength optical dipole trap. The measured transition accurately connects the ortho- and parastates of helium and constitutes a stringent test of QED theory. In addition we test polarizability calculations and ultracold scattering properties of the helium atom. Finally, our measurement probes the size of the nucleus at a level exceeding the projected accuracy of muonic helium measurements currently being performed in the context of the proton radius puzzle.

We report on the realization of an ultracold (<25~muK) mixture of rubidium ({87}Rb) and metastable triplet helium ({4}He) in an optical dipole trap. Our scheme involves laser cooling in a dual-species magneto-optical trap, simultaneous MW- and RF-induced forced evaporative cooling in a quadrupole magnetic trap, and transfer to a single-beam optical dipole trap. We observe long trapping lifetimes for the doubly spin-stretched spin-state mixture and measure much shorter lifetimes for other spin-state combinations. We discuss prospects for realizing quantum degenerate mixtures of alkali-metal and metastable helium atoms., Comment: 9 pages

In an ultracold, optically trapped mixture of $^{87}$Rb and metastable triplet $^4$He atoms we have studied trap loss for different spin-state combinations, for which interspecies Penning ionization is the main two-body loss process. We observe long trapping lifetimes for the purely quartet spin-state combination, indicating strong suppression of Penning ionization loss by at least two orders of magnitude. For the other spin-mixtures we observe short lifetimes that depend linearly on the doublet character of the entrance channel. We compare the extracted loss rate coefficient with recent predictions of multichannel quantum-defect theory for reactive collisions involving a strong exothermic loss channel and find near-universal loss for doublet scattering. Our work demonstrates control of reactive collisions by internal atomic state preparation., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures + Supplemental Materials

We observe a dramatic difference in optical line shapes of a $^4\text{He}$ Bose-Einstein condensate and a $^3\text{He}$ degenerate Fermi gas by measuring the 1557-nm $2~^3S-2~^1S$ magnetic dipole transition ($8~\text{Hz}$ natural linewidth) in an optical dipole trap. The $15~\text{kHz}$ FWHM condensate line shape is only broadened by mean field interactions, whereas the degenerate Fermi gas line shape is broadened to $75~\text{kHz}$ FWHM due to the effect of Pauli exclusion on the spatial and momentum distributions. The asymmetric optical line shapes are observed in excellent agreement with line shape models for the quantum degenerate gases. For $^4$He a triplet-singlet s-wave scattering length $a=+50(10)_{\text{stat}}(43)_{\text{syst}}~a_0$ is extracted. The high spectral resolution reveals a doublet in the absorption spectrum of the BEC, and this effect is understood by the presence of a weak optical lattice in which a degeneracy of the lattice recoil and the spectroscopy photon recoil leads to Bragg-like scattering., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 5 pages supplemental information

High precision spectroscopy on the $2 \ ^3 S \rightarrow 2 \ ^1 S$ transition is possible in ultracold optically trapped helium but the accuracy is limited by the ac-Stark shift induced by the optical dipole trap. To overcome this problem, we have built a trapping laser system at the predicted magic wavelength of 319.8 nm. Our system is based on frequency conversion using commercially available components and produces over 2 W of power at this wavelength. With this system, we show trapping of ultracold atoms, both thermal ($\sim0.2 \ \mathrm{\mu K}$) and in a Bose-Einstein condensate, with a trap lifetime of several seconds, mainly limited by off-resonant scattering., Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures

We demonstrate a simple scheme to reach Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of metastable triplet helium atoms using a single beam optical dipole trap with moderate power of less than 3 W. Our scheme is based on RF-induced evaporative cooling in a quadrupole magnetic trap and transfer to a single beam optical dipole trap that is located below the magnetic trap center. We transfer 1x10^6 atoms into the optical dipole trap, with an initial temperature of 14 \mu K, and observe efficient forced evaporative cooling both in a hybrid trap, in which the quadrupole magnetic trap operates just below the levitation gradient, and in the pure optical dipole trap, reaching the onset of BEC with 2x10^5 atoms and a pure BEC of 5x10^4 atoms. Our work shows that a single beam hybrid trap can be applied for a light atom, for which evaporative cooling in the quadrupole magnetic trap is strongly limited by Majorana spin-flips, and the very small levitation gradient limits the axial confinement in the hybrid trap., Comment: improved manuscript (accepted for publication in Applied Physics B)

We have realized Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of 87Rb in the F=2, m_F=2 hyperfine substate in a hybrid trap, consisting of a quadrupole magnetic field and a single optical dipole beam. The symmetry axis of the quadrupole magnetic trap coincides with the optical beam axis, which gives stronger axial confinement than previous hybrid traps. After loading 2x10^6 atoms at 14 muK from a quadrupole magnetic trap into the hybrid trap, we perform efficient forced evaporation and reach the onset of BEC at a temperature of 0.5 muK and with 4x10^5 atoms. We also obtain thermal clouds of 1x10^6 atoms below 1 muK in a pure single beam optical dipole trap, by ramping down the magnetic field gradient after evaporative cooling in the hybrid trap., Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, improved on basis of referee comments

We have calculated ac polarizabilities of the $2 \ ^3S$ and $2 \ ^1S$ states of both $^4$He and $^3$He in the range 318 nm to 2.5 $\mu$m and determined the magic wavelengths at which these polarizabilities are equal for either isotope. The calculations, only based on available ab initio tables of level energies and Einstein A coefficients, do not require advanced theoretical techniques. The polarizability contribution of the continuum is calculated using a simple extrapolation beyond the ionization limit, yet the results agree to better than 1% with such advanced techniques. Several promising magic wavelengths are identified around 320 nm with sufficient accuracy to design an appropriate laser system. The extension of the calculations to $^3$He is complicated due to the additional hyperfine structure, but we show that the magic wavelength candidates around 320 nm are predominantly shifted by the isotope shift., Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures

Recently we have reported (Knoop et al. [arXiv:1404.4826]) on an experimental determination of metastable triplet $^4$He+$^{87}$Rb scattering length by performing thermalization measurements for an ultracold mixture in a quadrupole magnetic trap. Here we present our experimental apparatus and elaborate on these thermalization measurements. In particular we give a theoretical description of interspecies thermalization rate for a quadrupole magnetic trap, i. e. in the presence of Majorana heating, and a general procedure to extract the scattering length from the elastic cross section at finite temperature based on knowledge of the $C_6$ coefficient alone. In addition, from our thermalization data we obtain an upper limit of the total interspecies two-body loss rate coefficient of $1.5\times 10^{-12}$ cm$^3$s$^{-1}$., Comment: This paper has been merged with arXiv:1404.4826 and the combined paper will be published in Phys. Rev. A

We have investigated the ultracold interspecies scattering properties of metastable triplet He and Rb. We performed state-of-the-art ab initio calculations of the relevant interaction potential, and measured the interspecies elastic cross section for an ultracold mixture of metastable triplet $^4$He and $^{87}$Rb in a quadrupole magnetic trap at a temperature of 0.5 mK. Our combined theoretical and experimental study gives an interspecies scattering length $a_{4+87}=+17^{+1}_{-4}$ $a_0$, which prior to this work was unknown. More general, our work shows the possibility of obtaining accurate scattering lengths using ab initio calculations for a system containing a heavy, many-electron atom, such as Rb., Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. A

We have measured the forbidden 2 3S1 - 2 1P1 transition at 887 nm in a quantum degenerate gas of metastable He-4 atoms confined in an optical dipole trap. The determined transition frequency is 338 133 594.4 (0.5) MHz, from which we obtain an ionization energy of the 2 1P1 state of 814 709 148.6 (0.5) MHz. This ionization energy is in disagreement by > 3 sigma with the most accurate quantum electrodynamics (QED) calculations available. Our measurements also provide a new determination of the lifetime of the 2 1P1 state of 0.551 (0.004)stat (+ 0.013,- 0.000)syst ns, which is the most accurate determination to date and in excellent agreement with theory., Comment: 10 pages, 13 figures, paper includes supplemental information. Paper submitted for review

We have analyzed our recently-measured three-body loss rate coefficient for a Bose-Einstein condensate of spin-polarized metastable triplet 4He atoms in terms of Efimov physics. The large value of the scattering length for these atoms, which provides access to the Efimov regime, arises from a nearby potential resonance. We find the loss coefficient to be consistent with the three-body parameter (3BP) found in alkali-metal experiments, where Feshbach resonances are used to tune the interaction. This provides new evidence for a universal 3BP, the first outside the group of alkali-metal elements. In addition, we give examples of other atomic systems without Feshbach resonances but with a large scattering length that would be interesting to analyze once precise measurements of three-body loss are available.

We have studied the decay of a Bose-Einstein condensate of metastable helium atoms in an optical dipole trap. In the regime where two- and three-body losses can be neglected we show that the Bose-Einstein condensate and the thermal cloud show fundamentally different decay characteristics. The total number of atoms decays exponentially with time constant tau; however, the thermal cloud decays exponentially with time constant (4/3)tau and the condensate decays much faster, and non-exponentially. We show that this behaviour, which should be present for all BECs in thermal equilibrium with a considerable thermal fraction, is due to a transfer of atoms from the condensate to the thermal cloud during its decay., Comment: The intuitive explanation of the atomic transfer effect has been corrected

We have experimentally studied the magnetic-field dependence of the decay of a Bose-Einstein condensate of metastable 4He atoms confined in an optical dipole trap, for atoms in the m=+1 and m=-1 magnetic substates, and up to 450 G. Our measurements confirm long-standing calculations of the two-body loss rate coefficient that show an increase above 50 G. We demonstrate that for m=-1 atoms, decay is due to three-body recombination only, with a three-body loss rate coefficient of 6.5(0.4)(0.6)10^(-27)cm^6s^(-1), which is interesting in the context of universal few-body theory. We have also searched for a recently-predicted d-wave Feshbach resonance, but did not observe it., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures

We review experimental and theoretical work on cold, trapped metastable noble gases. We em- phasize the aspects which distinguish work with these atoms from the large body of work on cold, trapped atoms in general. These aspects include detection techniques and collision processes unique to metastable atoms. We describe several experiments exploiting these unique features in fields including atom optics and statistical physics. We also discuss precision measurements on these atoms including fine structure splittings, isotope shifts, and atomic lifetimes.

Precision spectroscopy of simple atomic systems has refined our understanding of the fundamental laws of quantum physics. In particular, helium spectroscopy has played a crucial role in describing two-electron interactions, determining the fine-structure constant and extracting the size of the helium nucleus. Here we present a measurement of the doubly-forbidden 1557-nanometer transition connecting the two metastable states of helium (the lowest energy triplet state 2 3S1 and first excited singlet state 2 1S0), for which quantum electrodynamic and nuclear size effects are very strong. This transition is fourteen orders of magnitude weaker than the most predominantly measured transition in helium. Ultracold, sub-microkelvin, fermionic 3He and bosonic 4He atoms are used to obtain a precision of 8.10^{-12}, providing a stringent test of two-electron quantum electrodynamic theory and of nuclear few-body theory., Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures

We discuss the stability of homonuclear and heteronuclear mixtures of 3He and 4He atoms in the metastable 2^3S_1 state (He*) and predict positions and widths of Feshbach resonances by using the Asymptotic Bound-state Model (ABM). All calculations are performed without fit parameters, using \emph{ab-initio} calculations of molecular potentials. One promising very broad Feshbach resonance (\Delta B=72.9^{+18.3}_{-19.3} mT) is found that allows for tuning of the inter-isotope scattering length., Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures

We have investigated cold ionizing heteronuclear collisions in dilute mixtures of metastable (2 3S1) 3He and 4He atoms, extending our previous work on the analogous homonuclear collisions [R. J. W. Stas et al., PRA 73, 032713 (2006)]. A simple theoretical model of such collisions enables us to calculate the heteronuclear ionization rate coefficient, for our quasi-unpolarized gas, in the absence of resonant light (T = 1.2 mK): K34(th) = 2.4*10^-10 cm^3/s. This calculation is supported by a measurement of K34 using magneto-optically trapped mixtures containing about 1*10^8 atoms of each species, K34(exp) = 2.5(8)*10^-10 cm^3/s. Theory and experiment show good agreement., Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures

Fifty years ago, Hanbury Brown and Twiss (HBT) discovered photon bunching in light emitted by a chaotic source, highlighting the importance of two-photon correlations and stimulating the development of modern quantum optics . The quantum interpretation of bunching relies upon the constructive interference between amplitudes involving two indistinguishable photons, and its additive character is intimately linked to the Bose nature of photons. Advances in atom cooling and detection have led to the observation and full characterisation of the atomic analogue of the HBT effect with bosonic atoms. By contrast, fermions should reveal an antibunching effect, i.e., a tendency to avoid each other. Antibunching of fermions is associated with destructive two-particle interference and is related to the Pauli principle forbidding more than one identical fermion to occupy the same quantum state. Here we report an experimental comparison of the fermion and the boson HBT effects realised in the same apparatus with two different isotopes of helium, 3He (a fermion) and 4He (a boson). Ordinary attractive or repulsive interactions between atoms are negligible, and the contrasting bunching and antibunching behaviours can be fully attributed to the different quantum statistics. Our result shows how atom-atom correlation measurements can be used not only for revealing details in the spatial density, or momentum correlations in an atomic ensemble, but also to directly observe phase effects linked to the quantum statistics in a many body system. It may thus find applications to study more exotic situations >., Comment: Nature 445, 402 (2007). V2 includes the supplementary information

We give an overview of the experiments at the Laser Centre of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam on ultracold gases of metastable helium-4 and helium-3 as well as mixtures of both isotopes. We describe our experimental setup and discuss our experiments on Bose-Einstein condensation of 4He* (more than 10 million atoms in a BEC) and sympathetic cooling of 3He* towards Fermi degeneracy (more than 1 million atoms below the Fermi temperature as well as realization of a degenerate boson-fermion mixture). We also present our results on Penning Ionization in ~1 mK clouds containing a single isotope (homonuclear losses) or a mixture of both isotopes (heteronuclear losses)., Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures; to be published in the Proceedings of the International school of physics "Enrico Ferm": Ultracold Fermi gases, Varenna, June 20-30 (2006)

An experiment is proposed to excite the 'forbidden' 1s2s 3S1 - 1s2s 1S0 magnetic dipole (M1) transition at 1557 nm in a collimated and slow atomic beam of metastable helium atoms. It is demonstrated that an excitation rate of 5000 /s can be realised with the beam of a 2W narrowband telecom fiber laser intersecting the atomic beam perpendicularly. A Doppler-limited sub-MHz spectroscopic linewidth is anticipated. Doppler-free excitation of 2% of trapped and cooled atoms may be realised in a one-dimensional optical lattice geometry, using the 2W laser both for trapping and spectroscopy. The very small (8 Hz) natural linewidth of this transition presents an opportunity for accurate tests of atomic structure calculations of the helium atom. A measurement of the 3He - 4He isotope shift allows for accurate determination of the difference in nuclear charge radius of both isotopes., Comment: accepted for publication in Europhysics Letters

We discuss experiments to produce and detect atom correlations in a degenerate or nearly degenerate gas of neutral atoms. First we treat the atomic analog of the celebrated Hanbury Brown Twiss experiment, in which atom correlations result simply from interference effects without any atom interactions.We have performed this experiment for both bosons and fermions. Next we show how atom interactions produce correlated atoms using the atomic analog of spontaneous four-wavemixing. Finally, we briefly mention experiments on a one dimensional gas on an atom chip in which correlation effects due to both interference and interactions have been observed., Comment: to appear in conference proceedings "Atomic Physics 20"

We report the observation of simultaneous quantum degeneracy in a dilute gaseous Bose-Fermi mixture of metastable atoms. Sympathetic cooling of helium-3 (fermion) by helium-4 (boson), both in the lowest triplet state, allows us to produce ensembles containing more than 10^6 atoms of each isotope at temperatures below 1 micro-Kelvin, and achieve a fermionic degeneracy parameter of T/Tf=0.45. Due to their high internal energy, the detection of individual metastable atoms with sub-nanosecond time resolution is possible, permitting the study of bosonic and fermionic quantum gases with unprecedented precision. This may lead to metastable helium becoming the mainstay of quantum atom optics., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures submitted to PRL

We present a theoretical and experimental investigation of homonuclear ionizing collisions of laser-cooled metastable helium atoms, considering both the fermionic He-3 and bosonic He-4 isotope. The theoretical description combines quantum threshold behavior, Wigner's spin-conservation rule and quantum statistical symmetry requirements in a single-channel model, complementing a more complete close-coupling theory that has been reported for collisions of metastable He-4 atoms. The model is supported with measurements (in the absence of light fields) of ionization rates in magneto-optically trapped samples, that contain about 3*10^8 atoms of a single isotope. The ionization rates are determined from measurements of trap loss due to light-assisted collisions combined with comparative measurements of the ion production rate in the absence and presence of trapping light. Theory and experiment show good agreement., Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. A

We have produced a Bose-Einstein condensate of metastable helium (4He*) containing over 1.5x10^7 atoms, which is a factor of 25 higher than previously achieved. The improved starting conditions for evaporative cooling are obtained by applying one-dimensional Doppler cooling inside a magnetic trap. The same technique is successfully used to cool the spin-polarized fermionic isotope (3He*), for which thermalizing collisions are highly suppressed. Our detection techniques include absorption imaging, time-of-flight measurements on a microchannel plate detector and ion counting to monitor the formation and decay of the condensate., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures (changed content)

With a two-dimensional (2D) optical mask, nanoscale patterns are created for the first time in an atom lithography process using metastable helium atoms. The internal energy of the atoms is used to locally damage a hydrofobic resist layer, which is removed in a wet etching process. Experiments have been performed with several polarizations for the optical mask, resulting in different intensity patterns, and corresponding nanoscale structures. The results for a linear polarized light field show an array of holes with a diameter of 260 nm, in agreement with a computed pattern. With a circularly polarized light field a line pattern is observed with a spacing of 766 nm. Simulations taking into account many possible experimental imperfections can not explain this pattern., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures