Two-electron excitation of an interacting cold Rydberg gas

Abstract

We report the creation of an interacting cold Rydberg gas of strontium atoms. We show that the excitation spectrum of the inner valence electron is sensitive to the interactions in the Rydberg gas, even though they are mediated by the outer Rydberg electron. By studying the evolution of this spectrum we observe density-dependent population transfer to a state of higher angular momentum l. We determine the fraction of Rydberg atoms transferred, and identify the dominant transfer mechanism to be l-changing electron-Rydberg collisions associated with the formation of a cold plasma.

5 pages, 5 figures

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Production of quantum degenerate strontium gases: Larger, better, faster, colder
• Antiferromagnetic long-range order in dissipative Rydberg lattices
• Long-range Rydberg-Rydberg interactions in calcium, strontium and ytterbium
• Quantum and Nonlinear Optics in Strongly Interacting Atomic Ensembles
• Rydberg Electrometry for Optical Lattice Clocks
• Radiation trapping in a dense cold Rydberg gas