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Ultracold Rydberg atoms in a magneto-electric trap

Ulrich Schmidt1, Igor Lesanovsky2 and Peter Schmelcher1,3

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We investigate the quantum properties of an ultracold Rydberg atom exposed to a magnetic quadrupole field and a homogeneous electric field. The properly transformed Hamiltonian explicitly depends on the conserved total angular momentum and couples the centre of mass and electronic degrees of freedom. The corresponding Schrödinger equation is solved by an adiabatic separation focusing on a fixed n-manifold. The shape of the adiabatic electronic potential energy surfaces is analysed. With increasing electric field strength, avoided crossings among them become ubiquitous and the electric field-dominated regime spreads out within the centre-of-mass coordinate space. A transition from smooth surfaces for weak electric fields to surfaces involving a cusp-like behaviour in the strong field regime is observed. The latter involves a characteristic splitting behaviour of the surfaces due to the competition of the Stark and magnetic interactions. In contrast to previous investigations, our setup allows for the trapping of quantum states with a comparatively small electronic angular momentum.


PACS

37.10.De Atom cooling methods

32.60.+i Zeeman and Stark effects

32.80.Rm Multiphoton ionization and excitation to highly excited states

Subjects

Atomic and molecular physics

Dates

Issue 5 (14 March 2007)

Received 22 November 2006, in final form 16 January 2007

Published 19 February 2007



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