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arXiv:1704.06474 · Physical Review A

Level-mixing effect induced by blackbody radiation and its influence on the cosmological hydrogen recombination problem

Timur A. Zalialiutdinov, Dmitry A. Solovyev, Leonti N Labzowsky, G. Plunien

Published Jul 18, 2017• 6 citations
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Abstract

Two different effects of the blackbody-radiation-induced atomic line broadening are compared. The first one (stimulated Raman scattering) has been discussed by many authors; the second one (quadratic level mixing) was discussed in our previous work. It is shown that the mixing effect gives the most significant contribution to the line broadening and it is indicated how to distinguish these two effects in laboratory experiments. The influence of the level mixing on the recombination history of primordial plasma is also discussed.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.96.012512

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Two different effects of the blackbody-radiation-induced atomic line broadening are compared. The first one (stimulated Raman scattering) has been discussed by many authors; the second one (quadratic level mixing) was discussed in our previous work. It is shown that the mixing effect gives the most significant contribution to the line broadening and it is indicated how to distinguish these two effects in laboratory experiments. The influence of the level mixing on the recombination history of primordial plasma is also discussed.
Abstract The precise calculations of blackbody radiation (BBR)-induced Stark shifts and depopulation rates for low-lying states of a helium atom with the use of the variational approach are presented. An effect of the BBR-induced Stark-mixing of energy levels is considered. It is shown that this effect leads to a significant reduction in the lifetimes of helium-excited states. As a consequence, the influence of the Stark-mixing effect on the decay rates of metastable states in helium is discussed in the context of formation processes of the cosmic microwave background.
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Precision measurements of quantum systems often seek to probe or must account for the interaction with blackbody radiation. Over the past several decades, much attention has been given to ac Stark shifts and stimulated state transfer. For a blackbody in thermodynamic equilibrium, these two effects are determined by the expectation value of photon number in each mode of the Planck spectrum. Here we explore how the photon number variance of an equilibrium blackbody generally leads to a parametric broadening of the energy levels of quantum systems that is inversely proportional to the square root of the blackbody volume. We consider the effect in two cases which are potentially highly sensitive to this broadening: Rydberg atoms and atomic clocks. We find that even in blackbody volumes as small as 1 cm3{\mathrm{cm}}^{3}cm3, this effect is unlikely to contribute meaningfully to transition linewidths.
A highly excited (Rydberg) atom bathed in blackbody radiation is perturbed in two ways. A dynamic Stark shift is induced by the off-resonant components of the blackbody radiation. Additionally, electric-dipole transitions to other atomic energy levels are induced by the resonant components of the blackbody radiation. This depopulation effect shortens the Rydberg-state lifetime, thereby broadening the energy level. Calculations of these two effects in many states of hydrogen, helium, and the alkali-metal atoms Li, Na, K, Rb, and Cs are presented for T=300T=300T=300 K. Contributions from the entire blackbody spectrum and from both discrete and continuous perturbing states are included. The accuracy is considerably greater than that of previous estimates.
Spontaneous radiative recombination between protons and electrons to form hydrogen atoms with 8\ensuremath{\le}n\ensuremath{\le}19 has been measured. CO2{\mathrm{CO}}_{2}CO2​ laser light has been shown to induce stimulated radiative recombination to the n=11 and 12 levels with an inferred gain in the cross section of 1720\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}860 and 4790\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}2830 for a laser power of 12.6 and 15.3 W, respectively. This is in line with that predicted theoretically.