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Europhysics Letters (EPL)

Rubidium Rydberg Atoms in Bichromatic Microwave Fields

Andreas Buchleitner, Leszek Sirko, HERBERT WALTHER

Published Sep 1, 1991• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present first experimental results on the interaction of rubidium Rydberg atoms with bichromatic microwave fields. The experiments are performed in a regime where the effect of localization of the population distribution is observed for purely monochromatic fields. The second frequency leads to a significant destabilization of the population distribution. The experimental observations are compared to theoretical results.

DOI
10.1209/0295-5075/16/1/007

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Physical Review Letters•Jan 16, 1995•21 citations
We present first experimental results on the interaction of rubidium Rydberg atoms with bichromatic microwave fields. The experiments are performed in a regime where the effect of localization of the population distribution is observed for purely monochromatic fields. The second frequency leads to a significant destabilization of the population distribution. The experimental observations are compared to theoretical results.
We present experimental and theoretical results on highly excited Rydberg atoms passing through a waveguide. The waveguide is excited in a coherent mode with a superimposed component of technically generated noise. In the theoretical part of the paper we derive and solve a master equation for a Rydberg atom driven by a monochromatic coherent microwave field in the presence of noise. We show that a Rydberg atom subjected to a mixture of coherent modes and noise fields exhibits four dynamical regimes: (i) diffusive broadening, (ii) localization, (iii) destruction of coherence and localization, and (iv) relaxation to equilibrium. The four regimes are passed one after the other as a function of irradiation time. They occur on different time scales and are thus temporally well separated from each other. The theory is checked by an experiment on the time dependence of the population distribution of highly excited rubidium Rydberg atoms initially prepared in a unique and well-defined Rydberg state and irradiated by a strong microwave field. The localization regime, characterized by a ``freezing'' of the width of the wave packet with respect to the Rydberg levels, has been observed. The addition of a small noise component was shown to lead to delocalization after times inversely proportional to the noise power, as predicted by our theory.
In this chapter experiments on rubidium Rydberg atoms in external fields are reviewed [1 – 8]. In the first part results on the interaction of microwave radiation with rubidium Rydberg atoms are described. The Rydberg atoms interact with a microwave pulse of a well-defined duration. When applying coherent microwave radiation with a frequency exceeding a certain value, the experimentally observed microwave field strength at which 10% of the atoms are ionized has to be much larger than the value found by classical trajectory calculations. The atoms are stabilized by the dynamical localization. An extremely weak microwave broadband noise which is added to the coherent wave at least partially destroys the localization. This phenomenon depends on the bandwidth of the added noise. In further experiments the dependence of the 10% ionization microwave field strength on the duration τ of the microwave pulse has been investigated. For increasing noise level the 10% ionization field strength ∈ 0.1 develops from a behavior ∈ 0.1 ∼ τ −1/4 to a ∈ 0.1 ∼ τ −1/2 dependence, which is characteristic for a classical diffusion process. The second part of the chapter deals with experiments in strong static crossed electric and magnetic fields. Below as well as above the ionization energy the observed quasi-Landau(QL)-resonances are explained using classical trajectories. The ionization behavior of the QL-resonances is clearly influenced by the spatial structure of the associated classical orbits. In further experiments the dependence of the observed ionization energy on the magnetic field was investigated in the presence of a fixed static electric field.
We report theoretical study on ionization suppression of Rydberg atom by bichromatic microwave field.In the framework of one-dimensional classical model we find that with the monochromatic microwave field of (angular) frequency 2 and amplitude 2F one-dimensional Rydberg atom is ionized, while adding the second microwave field of frequency  and amplitude F to the atom subjected to the first microwave field prohibits ionization of the Rydberg atom in case Kepler frequency of the Rydberg atom excited in the state of principal quantum number n, 1/n 3 , nearly matches K/4( +2) with K = 1.
This paper reports on the results of experiments with cold rubidium Rydberg atoms in a magneto-optical trap. The specific feature of the experiments is the excitation of Rydberg atoms in a small volume within a cloud of cold atoms and the sorting of measured signals and spectra according to the number of detected Rydberg atoms. The effective lifetime of the 37 P Rydberg state and its polarizability in a weak electric field are measured. The results obtained are in good agreement with theoretical calculations. It is demonstrated that the localization of the excitation volume in the vicinity of the zero-magnetic-field point makes it possible to improve the spectral resolution and to obtain narrow microwave resonances in Rydberg atoms without switching off the quadrupole magnetic field of the trap. The dependence of the amplitude of dipole-dipole interaction resonances in Rydberg atoms on the number of atoms is measured. This dependence exhibits a linear behavior and agrees with the theory for a weak dipole-dipole interaction.
Excitation from ns\mathrm{ns}ns, np\mathrm{np}np, and nd\mathrm{nd}nd Rydberg states of rubidium to the adjacent manifolds by electrical pulses of 140 and 9 ns duration up to 200 V/cm is studied. These pulses correspond to half cycles of microwave fields of 2.6 GHz and 40 MHz. The observed population transfer (up to 40%) is not monotonically increasing with the field strength. For the 140 ps pulse local minima are found due to the absence of avoided crossings of appropriate size at the peak of the pulse. For the long pulses Stueckelberg oscillations are observed in the transfer yield.