Frankfurt 2006 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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A: Atomphysik
A 8: Poster I: Pr
äzisionsspektroskopie
A 8.5: Poster
Dienstag, 14. März 2006, 16:30–18:30, Labsaal
Experiments with an ultracold gas of Rydberg atoms — •J. Denskat1, M. Reetz-Lamour1, T. Amthor1, A.L. de Oliveira2,3, S. Westermann1, J. Deiglmayr1, and M. Weidemüller1 — 1Physikalisches Institut Universität Freiburg, Hermann-Herder-Str. 3, 79104 Freiburg — 2Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina, Departamento de Física, Joinville, SC 89223-100, Brazil — 3Universidade de São Paulo, Instituto de Física, São Carlos, SP 13560-970, Brazil
Atoms in highly excited states (Rydberg atoms) are far more strongly influenced by external fields than ground state atoms: The electric polarizability scales with the principal quantum number n as n7, the van-der-Waals interaction as n11 and the size of the electronic wavefunction as n2. Rydberg atoms in an ultracold gas (i.e. the initial motion can be ignored on the relevant timescales given by the Rydberg lifetime, typically a few 10µs), therefore constitute a unique tool to study controlled (many-body) interactions.
In our experiment we cool 87Rb atoms in a magneto-optical trap and excite the atomic cloud into Rydberg states with two photons (780nm, 480nm) from continuous wave lasers. Recent measurements focussed on the coherent excitation (efficiency up to 90%) [1] and the dynamics of resonant energy transfer processes [2]. The experimental details and results will be presented.
[1] Deiglmayr et al., OptComm subm.
[2] Westermann et al., EPJD subm.