Berlin 2005 – wissenschaftliches Programm

Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Downloads | Hilfe

A: Atomphysik

A 5: Atoms in External Fields

A 5.6: Fachvortrag

Samstag, 5. März 2005, 09:45–10:00, HU 3075

Rydberg Atoms in Magnetic Quadrupole Traps — •Igor Lesanovsky¹, Hannes Bock¹, Jörg Schmiedmayer¹, and Peter Schmelcher^1,2 — ¹Physikalisches Institut, Universität Heidelberg, Philosophenweg 12, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany — ²Theoretische Chemie, Institut für Physikalische Chemie,Universität Heidelberg, INF 229, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany

For the manipulation of ultra-cold atoms inhomogeneous magnetic fields play an essential role. As long as the spatial variation of the magnetic field are much less than the typical atomic length scale an atom behaves like a neutral particle coupling to the external field by its total spin only. For highly excited atoms or sufficient high magnetic field gradients this approximation does not hold. Here the coupling of the charge of the atomic constituents to the magnetic field has to be taken into account. We investigate the electronic structure of excited atoms exposed to magnetic quadrupole field configurations. Here, in contrast to the homogeneous field, the spin and spatial degrees of freedom are coupled leading to unique properties of the electronic states. An inspection of the systems symmetries reveals a two-fold degeneracy of the electronic states in the presence of the field. We analyze the energy-spectrum over a broad regime of field gradients. We show that the three-dimensional magnetic quadrupole field induces a permanent state dependent electric dipole moment of the atom.

References: [1] I. Lesanovsky, J. Schmiedmayer and P. Schmelcher, PRA 69, 053405 (2004) [2] I. Lesanovsky, J. Schmiedmayer and P. Schmelcher, PRA 70, 043409 (2004)