Magnetic-field dependent trap loss of ultracold metastable helium

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