The quest for Bose-Einstein condensation in atomic hydrogen

In the past decade attempts to observe BEC in spin-polarized atomic hydrogen have been thwarted by either recombination and related heating or rapid relaxation. Currently several ideas are being developed which have great promise. For a 3-D gas, static magnetic traps have been used to isolate atoms from walls where they recombine, but BEC has not been achieved due to enhanced spin-relaxation and inadequate detection sensitivity. A microwave trap which can confine atoms in the ground state, to suppress spin-relaxation, has been demonstrated for Cs and is being developed for hydrogen. In 2-D, techniques have been developed to greatly reduce heating of the 2-D layer so that high coverages can be achieved at low temperature to observe both the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition and BEC