On Producing Long-Lived Spin Polarized Metastable Atoms—Feasibility of Storing Electric Energy

Abstract

We describe a method of producing long-lived multiply excited spin polarized atoms or ions, the decay of which is strongly delayed or even blocked by intra-ionic magnetic stabilization. Special configurations with huge internal magnetic fields capture only spin polarized electrons in collisions with spin aligned atomic hydrogen gas targets. It is expected that the spin aligned configuration yields an extremely high internal magnetic field which will effectively block spin flip transitions. By this the lifetime of inner shell vacancies is expected to strongly increase.