Bulletin of the American Physical Society
52nd Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics
Volume 66, Number 6
Monday–Friday, May 31–June 4 2021; Virtual; Time Zone: Central Daylight Time, USA
Session S05: Rydberg MoleculesLive
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Chair: Brian Desalvo, Indiana |
Thursday, June 3, 2021 10:30AM - 10:42AM Live |
S05.00001: Microscopy of correlated dynamics using Rydberg macrodimers Simon Hollerith, Kritsana Srakaew, Jun Rui, David Wei, Antonio Rubio-Abadal, Andreas Kruckenhauser, Valentin Walther, Rick Van Bijnen, Johannes Zeiher, Christian Gross, Immanuel F Bloch Exciting atoms in optical lattices to Rydberg states enhances the cold atom toolbox by extended range interactions. Rydberg macrodimers - electrostatically bound Rydberg atom pairs - provide huge bond lengths larger than the typical distance between neighboring lattice sites. Combined with quantum gas microscopy, this allows us to measure how their photoassociation depends on the angle between the molecular axis and external control fields. The observed dependencies represent a fingerprint of the electronic structure and reveal the underlying molecular quantum numbers. Off-resonant coupling to macrodimers also opens new avenues to Rydberg-dressed interactions in the ground state manifold. We verify the presence of the engineered Ising Hamiltonian induced by dressing to macrodimer states by observing correlated spin flips at the molecular bond length using many-body Ramsey interferometry. Tuning the laser on resonance, we observe a spatial blockade mechanism between pairs of macrodimers arising from a combination of dipolar interactions between Rydberg atoms and macrodimers and macrodimer pairs. Our results represent the first quantum simulation based on Rydberg macrodimers and provide a new pathway to enter a correlated regime using Rydberg interactions. |
Thursday, June 3, 2021 10:42AM - 10:54AM Live |
S05.00002: Probing a strongly interacting bose gas with ultralong-range Rydberg molecules Yi Lu, Soumya K Kanungo, Joseph D Whalen, F B Dunning, Tom C Killian Ultralong-range Rydberg molecules (ULLRMs) are formed by the scattering between an excited Rydberg electron and at least one nearby neutral atom. Since the wave functions for ground state ULLRM dimers are strongly localized near the outer classical electron turning point, whose location depends on n, they can be used to probe pair correlation functions. In weakly interacting gases, the ULRRMs have been used to measure the pair correlations arising from quantum statistics on the length scale of the thermal de Broglie wavelength [1]. In the strongly interacting regime, however, ULRRMs can be used to probe the two-particle scattering wavefunction at short range. I will present measurements of the excitation rate of the ULRRM dimers in a strongly interacting gas of 86Sr atoms (as = 823 a0). In particular, we have observed contributions from s-wave and d-wave components of the scattering wavefunction to the formation of ULRRMs. The dependence of each components on an external magnetic field and the momentum kicks imparted by the excitation photons are also studied. |
Thursday, June 3, 2021 10:54AM - 11:06AM Live |
S05.00003: A pulsed ion microscope to probe quantum gases Nicolas Zuber, Christian Veit, Óscar-Andrey Herrera-Sancho, Viraatt Sai Vishwakarma Anasuri, Moritz Berngruber, Thomas Schmid, Florian Meinert, Robert Loew, Tilman Pfau We present a high-resolution ion microscope [1] aiming to study phenomena ranging from microscopic few body processes to extended many-body systems. The three electrostatic lenses of the microscope, combined with a spatially and temporal resolving delay line detector, allows a highly tunable magnification from 200 to over 1500. Measurements with ionized ultracold rubidium atoms show a high resolution of better than 200nm over a field of view of 28µm and a depth of field of 70µm for the highest magnifications. In the presented pulsed operating mode, the study of highly excited Rydberg atoms and cold ions is possible in an almost electric field free environment. The pulsed extraction of the observed particles permits the study of time depended phenomena on the single-atom level as for example ion-atom hybrid systems. By reconstructing the position along the optical axis via the time of flight information of the detected particle, we create a three dimensional image. |
Thursday, June 3, 2021 11:06AM - 11:18AM Live |
S05.00004: Synthetic dimension-induced conical intersections in Rydberg molecules Frederic Hummel, Matthew Eiles, Peter Schmelcher We observe a series of conical intersections in the potential energy curves governing both the collision between a Rydberg atom and a ground-state atom and the structure of Rydberg molecules. By employing the electronic energy of the Rydberg atom as a synthetic dimension we circumvent the von Neumann-Wigner theorem. These conical intersections can occur when the Rydberg atom’s quantum defect is similar in size to the electron-–ground-state atom scattering phase shift divided by π, a condition satisfied in several commonly studied atomic species. The conical intersections have an observable consequence in the rate of ultracold l-changing collisions of the type Rb(nf)+Rb(5s)→Rb(nl>3)+Rb(5s). In the vicinity of a conical intersection, this rate is strongly suppressed, and the Rydberg atom becomes nearly transparent to the ground-state atom. |
Thursday, June 3, 2021 11:18AM - 11:30AM Live |
S05.00005: Topological states in a Rydberg composite Matthew T Eiles A Rydberg composite is an assembly of ground-state atoms interacting with a single Rydberg atom. Since the perturbing atoms lift the degeneracy of high angular momentum states of the Rydberg atom, by constraining the atomic positions to certain geometries we can tailor the resulting energy eigenspectrum and electronic wave functions to reveal topologically interesting effects. In particular, the exemplary Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model can be realized by arranging the atoms with staggered positions in a ring around the Rydberg atom. With the versatility of the Rydberg composite we expand on this scenario to study the effect of long-range hopping interactions, on-site and hopping disorder, and mixed-dimensional systems in order to develop new insights into topological physics. |
Thursday, June 3, 2021 11:30AM - 11:42AM Live |
S05.00006: Heteronuclear long-range Rydberg molecules Michael Peper, Johannes Deiglmayr In this contribution, I will present recent spectroscopic results of the photoassociation of heteronuclear long-range Rydberg molecules (LRMs) in a dual-species MOT of 39K and 133Cs atoms [1]. This represents the first experimental study on heteronuclear bialkali LRMs. LRMs are bound states of a Rydberg atom and a ground-state atom located within the orbit of the Rydberg electron, with the binding originating from the Rydberg electron–ground-state atom scattering interaction [2]. We study the density dependence of the photoassociation rates which sensitively depend on the relative pair-correlation functions of the two elements [3]. By selectively exchanging the Rydberg and perturber atom, we systematically vary the binding interactions. High-resolution photoassociation and millimeter-wave spectra are modelled by ab-initio theoretic models. This work paves the way to obtain low-energy electron-atom scattering phase shifts from improved theoretical models of the experimentally observed binding energies, and the formation of plasmas consisting of oppositely charged particles with equal mass [4]. [1] M. Peper, and J. Deiglmayr, Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 013001 (2021). [2] C. H. Greene, A. S. Dickinson, and H. R. Sadeghpour, Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 2458 (2000). [3] J. D. Whalen et al., Phys. Rev. A 101, 060701(R) (2020). [4] M. Peper, and J. Deiglmayr, J. Phys. B 53, 064001 (2020). |
Thursday, June 3, 2021 11:42AM - 11:54AM Live |
S05.00007: Photodissociation of long-range Rydberg molecules Michael Peper, Johannes Deiglmayr In this presentation we will discuss photodissociation of long-range Rydberg molecules (LRMs) [1]. LRMs are bound states of a ground-state atom located within the orbit of a Rydberg electron, where the binding is provided by the Rydberg-electron–ground-state atom scattering interaction. We demonstrate the potential of this new experimental tool by i) performing a complete remote spin flip on a free ground-state atom through the weak interaction with a Rydberg atom and by ii) reconstructing the electronic and vibrational wavefunction of the LRM from projective measurements. In these measurements we exploit the fact that the binding of a LRM depends sensitively on the Rydberg electrons probability density at the position of the ground state atom. By simply transferring the Rydberg electron to an atomic orbital which has a nodal plane containing the internuclear axis, we cancel the first-order binding interactions and project the molecule onto non-interacting atomic fragments. The experiments are performed on LRMs of 39K2, formed by photoassociation in an ultracold gas of potassium atoms in states correlated to 37P, and photodissociated to free atoms in 35D and the ground state, respectively. The experimental results are quantitatively analyzed by state-of-the-art ab-initio calculations. |
Thursday, June 3, 2021 11:54AM - 12:06PM Live |
S05.00008: Atomic Rydberg excitations in a low density ultracold gas of polar molecules Vanessa C Olaya Agudelo, Jesús Pérez Ríos, Felipe Herrera Ultracold scattering experiments with Rydberg atoms in dense neutral atom-Rydberg mixtures has led to the discovery of exotic bound long-range Rydberg molecules, with a ground state atom residing within the orbit of a Rydberg electron [1]. We now study the long-range interaction of Rydberg alkali-metal atoms with heteronuclear alkali-metal dimers in the regime of low molecular densities, such that the Rydberg-dimer interaction is dominated by van der Waals forces. We compute accurate C6 coefficients for a large set of atomic Rydberg states n2Lj interacting with ground state molecules [2]. For the (52S1/2 )87Rb-KRb(J=0) collision pair, we predict large probabilities for forming long-range Rydberg-molecule bound states (trimers) with (n ∼ 50)2D atomic Rydberg character, in a two-photon photoassociation scheme. We discuss the feasibility of detecting Rb-KRb trimers in currently available atom-molecule co-trapping experiments. |
Thursday, June 3, 2021 12:06PM - 12:18PM Live |
S05.00009: Long-range Rydberg-atom-ion molecules of Rb and Cs Alisher Duspayev, Xiaoxuan Han, Michael A Viray, Lu Ma, Jianming Zhao, Georg A Raithel We present a novel type of Rydberg dimer, consisting of a Rydberg-state atom bound to a distant positive ion. The molecule is formed through long-range electric-multipole interaction between the Rydberg atom and the point-like ion. We present potential energy curves (PECs) that are asymptotically connected with Rydberg nP- or nD-states of rubidium or cesium. The PECs exhibit deep, long-range wells which support many vibrational states of Rydberg-atom-ion molecules (RAIMs). We discuss photo-association of RAIMs in both the weak and the strong optical-coupling regimes between initial and Rydberg states of the neutral atom. Experimental considerations for the realization of RAIMs are discussed as well. |
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