Hannover 2016 – scientific programme
Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help
Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 14: Ultracold plasmas and Rydberg systems I (with A)
Q 14.1: Talk
Monday, February 29, 2016, 17:00–17:15, f303
Rydberg Spectroscopy in a Bose-Einstein Condensate — •Kathrin Sophie Kleinbach1, Michael Schlagmüller1, Tara Cubel Liebisch1, Felix Engel1, Fabian Böttcher1, Karl M. Westphal1, Robert Löw1, Sebastian Hofferberth1, Tilman Pfau1, Jesús Pérez-Ríos2, and Chris H. Greene2 — 15. Physikalisches Insitut and IQST, Universität Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 57, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany — 2Department of Physics and Astronomy, Purdue University, 47907 West Lafayette, IN, USA
Spectroscopy of a single Rydberg atom excited within a Bose-Einstein condensate is presented. Not only a frequency shift proportional to the density is observed, as discovered by Amaldi and Segre in 1934, but an assymetric broadening, which depends on the principal quantum number n. The line broadening depends on the interaction potential energy curves of the Rydberg electron scatterer with the neutral atom perturber. In Rb there is a shape resonance for the triplet p-wave scattering of e-Rb(5s) at 0.02 eV leading to a potential with a large energy shift, which crosses the lower lying nS, (n-2)D, and (n-1)P states. When a nS +N x 5S1/2 state is photoassociated, neutral atom perturbers near the crossing with the shape resonance potential become relevant, leading to large n-dependent line broadenings. We present a simple microscopic model for the spectroscopic line shape by treating the atoms overlapped with the Rydberg orbit as zero-velocity, independent, point-like particles, with binding energies associated with their ion-neutral separation, and good agreement is found.