Feasibility of cooling and trapping metastable alkaline-earth atoms - art.no. 023002

Metastability and long-range interactions of Mg, Ca, and Sr in the lowest-e nergy metastable P-3(2) State are investigated. The calculated lifetimes ar e 38 min for Mg*, 118 min for Ca*, and 17 min for Sr*, supporting feasibili ty of cooling and trapping experiments. The quadrupole-quadrupole long-rang e interactions of two metastable atoms are evaluated for various molecular symmetries. Hund's case (c) 4(g) potential possesses a large 100-1000 K pot ential barrier. Therefore magnetic trap losses can possibly be reduced usin g cold metastable atoms in a stretched M = 2 state. Calculations were perfo rmed in the framework of ab initio relativistic configuration interaction m ethod coupled with;the random-phase approximation.