Trapping Cold Ground State Argon Atoms

We trap cold, ground state argon atoms in a deep optical dipole trap produced by a buildup cavity. The atoms, which are a general source for the sympathetic cooling of molecules, are loaded in the trap by quenching them from a cloud of laser-cooled metastable argon atoms. Although the ground state atoms cannot be directly probed, we detect them by observing the collisional loss of cotrapped metastable argon atoms and determine an elastic cross section. Using a type of parametric loss spectroscopy we also determine the polarizability of the metastable 4s[3/2](2) state to be (7.3 +/- 1.1) x 10(-39) Cm-2/V. Finally, Penning and associative losses of metastable atoms in the absence of light assisted collisions, are determined to be (3.3 +/- 0.8) x 10(-10) cm(3) s(-1).