Norman Hascoe Distinguished Lecture Series

Helium atom is a simple atom with two isotopes, a bosonic one (He⁴) and a fermionic one (He³). Optical pumping of He³ has allowed one to observe one of the first evidences of quantum transport phenomena in polarized quantum fluids. More recently, laser cooling of He⁴ in the metastable state 2³S¹ has opened the way to several new investigations: laser cooling below the single photon recoil limit and connections with Lévy flights; Bose Einstein condensation of atoms in a metastable state; production of ultracold molecules formed by two metastable atoms by photo-association; dark states involving coherent superpositions of molecular states and states of a pair of colliding atoms; bunching and antibunching  behaviour of bosonic and fermionic atoms. A brief review of these experiments will be presented, showing the evolution of ideas in this field.