Prospects for Bose-Einstein Condensation in Cesium

Abstract

We analyze all of the cold-collision data for Cs, consisting of atomic fountain frequency shifts and elastic scattering rates, to determine phase parameters that completely characterize cold collisions between two ground-state cesium atoms. We show that the fast decays of spin-polarized gas samples in two recent attempts to reach Bose-Einstein condensation in cesium are due to potential and Feshbach resonances which enhance the depolarizing atom-atom collisions. We discuss the prospects for realizing Bose-Einstein condensation in ${}^{133}\mathrm{Cs}$ and in ${}^{135}\mathrm{Cs}$.