Coherent elliptic Rydberg atoms

Thomas Ehrenreich, Brett D DePaola, Lars Michael Kristensen +3 more

John A. Macfarlane, Barbara L. Whitten

J. C. Day, Thomas Ehrenreich, Søren B. Hansen +3 more

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.

K. S. Mogensen, J. C. Day, Thomas Ehrenreich +2 more

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.

Kashif Ammar Yasir, Wu-Ming Liu

Luz V. Vela-Arevalo