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Physical Review A

Coherent elliptic states in lithium

K. S. Mogensen, J. C. Day, Thomas Ehrenreich, Erik Horsdal Pedersen, Knud Taulbjerg

Published May 1, 1995• 30 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A detailed comparison between experimental lifetimes for Rydberg atoms formed by the adiabatic crossed-field method and corresponding theoretical lifetimes has been performed to document that the crossed-field method indeed may be used to generate and control coherent elliptic states of highly excited Rydberg atoms. It is found that core effects play a negligible role except for states of very high eccentricity.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.51.4038

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A detailed comparison between experimental lifetimes for Rydberg atoms formed by the adiabatic crossed-field method and corresponding theoretical lifetimes has been performed to document that the crossed-field method indeed may be used to generate and control coherent elliptic states of highly excited Rydberg atoms. It is found that core effects play a negligible role except for states of very high eccentricity.
Oriented elliptic Rydberg atoms have been formed in a thermal beam of Li atoms by the adiabatic crossed-field method. All coherent elliptic quantum states from linear to circular can be produced by this method. The orientation and eccentricity is controlled by the external fields. While the formation of circular states by the crossed-field method has already been established experimentally, the radiative decay of the Rydberg atoms formed here was measured and compared with theory to verify that highly eccentric elliptic quantum states may also be formed.
Electron capture cross sections for coherent elliptic Rydberg states have been measured as a function of eccentricity. The ion impact velocity was parallel to the minor axis of the associated, classical elliptic orbit and both clockwise and anticlockwise orbital motion of the electron were studied. The incoming ions were 2.5 keV 23 Na + and the Rydberg target, with principal quantum number n=25, was formed by laser excitation of Li atoms with subsequent adiabatic switching of crossed, external electric and magnetic fields. A strong dependence on eccentricity and sense of orbital motion was found.
This paper presents the coherent elliptic states (CES) of alkaline constructed from the spherical Rydberg wavefunctions generated by the B-spline method associated with Hartree–Fock approximation. To construct the elliptic orbit for alkaline is not straightforward. The core effect plays an important role for the formation of elliptic states especially in higher and lower eccentricity. When the eccentricity is not large (i.e. e=0.6), the physical quantities of CES of alkaline atoms can be theoretically calculated by the replacement with hydrogen atom.
The cross section for charge transfer in fast collisions between Rydberg atoms in coherent elliptic states of n=25 and singly charged ions has been measured as a function of the eccentricity and the orientation of the initial state. Dramatic variations are seen. Theoretical results based on classical collision dynamics are in good qualitative agreement with the experimental data for initial conditions leading to relatively large cross sections. Quantal close‐coupling results scaled from n=4 to n=25 are in better overall agreement with experiment.
Circular atoms, i.e., Rydberg atoms with maximum angular momentum, are semiclassical atoms of great interest for Rydberg constant metrology and QED tests. Following a suggestion by Delande and Gay, we have prepared circular atoms by a new method, involving the adiabatic switching of crossed electric and magnetic fields. The method, which is demonstrated for Rydberg states of lithium (principal quantum number n=20to25n=20 \mathrm{to} 25n=20to25, is applicable over a wide variety of experiment conditions.