We have investigated both theoretically and experimentally dipolar relaxation
in a gas of magnetically trapped chromium atoms. We have found that the large
magnetic moment of 6 μB results in an event rate coefficient for dipolar
relaxation processes of up to 3.2⋅10−11 cm3s−1 at a magnetic
field of 44 G. We present a theoretical model based on pure dipolar coupling,
which predicts dipolar relaxation rates in agreement with our experimental
observations. This very general approach can be applied to a large variety of
dipolar gases.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figure