Rostock 2019 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 8: Ultra-cold atoms, ions and BEC (joint session A/Q)

A 8.1: Vortrag

Montag, 11. März 2019, 16:15–16:30, S HS 1 Physik

Rydberg Excitation of Ultracold Atoms Interacting with Trapped Ions — •Norman V. Ewald, Thomas Feldker, Henrik Hirzler, Matteo Mazzanti, Henning A. Fürst, and Rene Gerristma — Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

We report on the observation of interactions between ultracold Rydberg atoms and ions in a Paul trap [1]. The observed inelastic collisions, manifested in charge transfer between the Rydberg atoms and ions, exceed Langevin collisions for ground state atoms by almost three orders of magnitude in rate. This indicates a huge increase in interaction strength. The ion loss spectrum exhibits a long tail on the red side of the Rydberg resonance which we attribute to the electric field of a single ion. We study the effect of the bare Paul trap’s electric fields on the Rydberg excitation spectra. Furthermore, we demonstrate Rydberg excitation on a dipole-forbidden transition with the aid of the electric field of a single trapped ion. Our results demonstrate the possibility of tuning interactions between ultracold atoms and ions by laser coupling to Rydberg states. These techniques may allow to create spin-spin interactions between atoms and ions [2] and to overcome recently observed heating due to ionic micromotion in atom-ion hybrids [3,4].

[1] N. V. Ewald, T. Feldker, H. Hirzler, H. Fürst, and R. Gerritsma, arXiv:1809.03987 (2018). [2] T. Secker, R. Gerritsma, A. W. Glätzle, and A. Negretti, Phys. Rev. A 94, 013420 (2016). [3] T. Secker et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 263201 (2017). [4] Z. Meir et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 243401 (2016).