title: Laser excitation of positronium in the Paschen-Back regime.
abstract: Zeeman mixing of singlet and triplet 2P states of positronium (Ps) atoms, followed by decay back to the ground state, can effectively turn a long-lived triplet atom into a short-lived singlet state, which would seem to preclude laser cooling of Ps in a magnetic field. Here we report experiments which show that, in fact, because of the large splitting of the n=2 states in a high magnetic field (the Paschen-Back regime), the amount of such mixing diminishes approximately exponentially with an increasing magnetic field >0.01  T and is essentially eliminated above ∼2  T. Thus, laser cooling of Ps should be feasible at high fields, which will facilitate the production of a Ps Bose-Einstein condensate.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Riverside, California 92521-0413, USA.
authors.forename: D B
authors.initials: DB
authors.lastname: Cassidy
authors.forename: T H
authors.initials: TH
authors.lastname: Hisakado
authors.forename: H W K
authors.initials: HW
authors.lastname: Tom
authors.forename: A P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Mills