SPIN-POLARIZED HYDROGEN - A WEAKLY INTERACTING BOSON GAS

These lectures on a gas of spin-polarized hydrogen discuss the developments in this field up to the latest results. First, hydrogen is treated as a stable non-recombining gas and many fundamental properties such as Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC), the two-dimensional Kosterlitz-Thouless transition to superfluidity, and interactions with helium are discussed. In the second section the experimental production and handling of spin-polarized hydrogen is treated This includes theoretical and experimental discussions of two- and three-body recombination as well as relaxation, both in the normal and condensate phase. These processes have so far prevented the experimental observation of degenerate quantum effects, as they either limit the density or the temperatures of samples. In the final section several experimental ideas for BEC, currently under development, are discussed These include the magnetostatic trap, the microwave trap, compression of hydrogen as bubbles in helium, compression with magnetic field gradients, and the use of the Lyman-alpha laser source in the study of atomic hydrogen.