TY - JOUR T1 - Ultracold collision properties of metastable alkaline-earth atoms JF - Physical Review Letters Y1 - 2003 A1 - Andrei Derevianko A1 - Sergey G. Porsev A1 - Svetlana Kotochigova A1 - Eite Tiesinga A1 - Paul S. Julienne AB - Ultra-cold collisions of spin-polarized 24Mg,40Ca, and 88Sr in the metastable 3P2 excited state are investigated. We calculate the long-range interaction potentials and estimate the scattering length and the collisional loss rate as a function of magnetic field. The estimates are based on molecular potentials between 3P2 alkaline-earth atoms obtained from ab initio atomic and molecular structure calculations. The scattering lengths show resonance behavior due to the appearance of a molecular bound state in a purely long-range interaction potential and are positive for magnetic fields below 50 mT. A loss-rate model shows that losses should be smallest near zero magnetic field and for fields slightly larger than the resonance field, where the scattering length is also positive. VL - 90 UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0210076v1 CP - 6 J1 - Phys. Rev. Lett. U5 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.90.063002 ER -