Mainz 2017 – scientific programme
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A: Fachverband Atomphysik
A 36: Rydberg gasses II
A 36.2: Talk
Friday, March 10, 2017, 14:45–15:00, HS 20
Calculation of Rydberg interaction potentials — •Sebastian Weber1, Christoph Tresp2, Henri Menke3, Alban Urvoy4, Ofer Firstenberg5, Hans Peter Büchler1, and Sebastian Hofferberth2 — 1ITP3, Universität Stuttgart, Germany — 2PI5, Universität Stuttgart, Germany — 3FKF, Max-Planck-Institut Stuttgart, Germany — 4RLE, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA — 5Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
The long-range interaction between individual Rydberg atoms provides a powerful tool exploited in an ever-growing range of applications in quantum information science, quantum simulation, and ultracold chemistry. One hallmark of the Rydberg interaction is that both its strength and angular dependence can be finetuned with great flexibility by choosing appropriate Rydberg states and applying external electric and magnetic fields. More and more experiments are probing this interaction at short atomic distances or with such high precision that perturbative calculations as well as restrictions to the leading dipole-dipole interaction term are no longer sufficient. We discuss the full calculation of Rydberg interaction potentials including electromagnetic fields with arbitrary direction. Symmetry arguments and selection rules greatly reduce the size of the Hamiltonian matrix, enabling the direct diagonalization of the Hamiltonian up to higher multipole orders on a desktop computer. Finally, we present example calculations showing the relevance of the full interaction calculation to current experiments. Our software for calculating Rydberg potentials is made available as open-source (https://pairinteraction.github.io/).