Hannover 2013 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 56: Poster III

Q 56.89: Poster

Donnerstag, 21. März 2013, 16:00–18:30, Empore Lichthof

Quantum-classical lifetimes of Rydberg molecules — •Andrej Junginger, Jörg Main, and Günter Wunner — 1. Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Stuttgart, Germany

A remarkable property of Rydberg atoms is the possibility to create molecules formed by a scattering process of a highly excited Rydberg electron and an atom in the ground state. Besides the good agreement between theory [1] and the experiment [2] concerning the vibrational states of the molecule, the experimental observations yield the astonishing feature that the lifetime of the molecule is clearly reduced as compared to the bare Rydberg atom [3]. With focus on this yet unexplained observation, we investigate the vibrational ground state of the molecule in a quantum-classical framework. We show that the Rydberg wave function is continuously detuned by the presence of the moving ground state atom and that the timescale on which the detuning significantly exceeds the natural linewidth is in good agreement with the observed reduced lifetimes of the Rydberg molecule.

[1] C. H. Greene et al , Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 2458 (2000).

[2] V. Bendkowsky et al, Nature 458, 1005, (2009).

[3] B. Butscher et al , J. Phys. B 44, 184004 (2011).