Erlangen 2018 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 42: Poster Session IIIb

A 42.16: Poster

Donnerstag, 8. März 2018, 16:15–18:15, Zelt Ost

Rydberg Optical Feshbach Resonances — •Tanita Eichert¹, Oliver Thomas^1,2, Carsten Lippe¹, and Herwig Ott¹ — ¹Department of physics and research center Optimas, University of Kaiserslautern — ²Graduate school materials science in Mainz, Staudingerweg 9, 55128 Mainz

In a cloud of ultracold atoms the scattering interaction between a ground state atom and the highly excited Rydberg electron gives rise to an oscillatory potential that supports molecular bound states. We show that by coupling two ground state atoms to a Rydberg molecular state via a laser field, we realize a Rydberg optical Feshbach resonance. By tuning the laser field, the Rydberg optical Feshbach resonance results in a changed interatomic interaction, that we detect as different revival times in collapse and revival experiments in an optical lattice. As off-resonant excitations lead to the formation of Rydberg atoms, we observe an additional interaction shift that is attributed to Rydberg-Rydberg-interactions between the atoms. Long lifetimes of Rydberg molecular states allow us to maintain long sample lifetimes on the order of milliseconds while changing the scattering length by up to 50 Bohr radii. So far optical Feshbach resonances were observed near intercombination transitions in strontium and ytterbium. We believe that Rydberg optical Feshbach resonances open up a whole new field: They are feasible with arbitrary Rydberg molecular states and all atomic species that are able to create Rydberg molecules. Especially this plenitude of molecular states allows to optimize the ratio between the change in scattering length and loss rates in further research.