Mainz 2017 – scientific programme
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A: Fachverband Atomphysik
A 17: Rydberg atoms
A 17.1: Talk
Tuesday, March 7, 2017, 14:30–14:45, N 3
Trilobite Rydberg molecules in Rubidium — •Kathrin S. Kleinbach1, Florian Meinert1, Felix Engel1, Woojin Kwon1, Sebastian Hofferberth1, Robert Löw1, Tilman Pfau1, and Georg Raithel2 — 15. Physikalisches Institut and IQST, Universität Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 57, 70569 Stuttgart,Germany — 2Department of Physics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, USA
Rydberg atoms exhibit extreme properties due to their large size and high polarizability. Moreover, in the ultracold regime, the interaction of the Rydberg electron with a neutral ground-state atom gives rise to long-range bound molecular states. A class of such homonuclear dimers, so called "trilobite molecules", have been shown to possess huge electronic dipole moments exceeding hundreds of Debye, which arise from interaction-induced admixing of high angular momentum Rydberg states. However, direct photo-association of such states is hindered by the required angular momentum transfer.
Here, we devise a novel method for two-color photo-association of Rb87 trilobite Rydberg molecules with large permanent dipole moment employing remote spin flips. More specifically, strong mixing of singlet and triplet scattering channels mediated by the ground-state hyperfine interaction couples the s-wave molecular state 50S↓+5S↑ and the trilobite state 47Trilobite↑+5S↓. This mixing allows for direct laser excitation of trilobite molecules, which we demonstrate via photo-association spectroscopy. Also, the the dipole moment is measured and the data is compared to predictions from calculated potential energy curves.