Giant cross section for molecular ion formation in ultracold Rydberg gases

Abstract

We have studied the associative ionization of a Rydberg atom and a ground state atom in an ultracold Rydberg gas. The measured scattering cross section is three orders of magnitude larger than the geometrical size of the produced molecule. This giant enhancement of the reaction kinetics is due to an efficient directed mass transport which is mediated by the Rydberg electron. We also find that the total inelastic scattering cross section is given by the geometrical size of the Rydberg electron's wavefunction.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Observation of mesoscopic crystalline structures in a two-dimensional Rydberg gas
• Ultracold Neutral Plasmas
• Ionization of Sodium and Rubidium nS, nP and nD Rydberg atoms by blackbody radiation
• The Chemi-Ionization Processes in Slow Collisions of Rydberg Atoms with Ground State Atoms: Mechanism and Applications
• Scanning electron microscopy of Rydberg-excited Bose-Einstein condensates

Cited by in corpus (30)

• Nonlinear quantum optics mediated by Rydberg interactions
• Observation of pendular butterfly Rydberg molecules
• Bistability vs. Metastability in Driven Dissipative Rydberg Gases
• Ultracold chemical reactions of a single Rydberg atom in a dense gas
• Probing a scattering resonance in Rydberg molecules with a Bose-Einstein condensate
• Single-photon absorber based on strongly interacting Rydberg atoms
• Rydberg molecule-induced remote spin-flips
• Experimental realization of a Rydberg optical Feshbach resonance in a quantum many-body system
• Large Energy Superpositions via Rydberg Dressing
• Deeply bound (24$D_J$ + 5$S_{1/2}$) ${}^{87}$Rb and ${}^{85}$Rb molecules for eight spin couplings
• Synthetic dimension-induced conical intersections in Rydberg molecules
• Rydberg Aggregates
• Dynamically Probing Ultracold Lattice Gases via Rydberg Molecules
• Heteronuclear long-range Rydberg molecules
• Electromagnetically induced transparency of ultralong-range Rydberg molecules
• Spin-Interaction Effects for Ultralong-range Rydberg Molecules in a Magnetic Field
• Observation of spin-orbit-dependent electron scattering using long-range Rydberg molecules
• Condensation versus Long-range Interaction: Competing Quantum Phases in Bosonic Optical Lattice Systems at Near-resonant Rydberg Dressing
• Formation of ultracold ion pairs through long-range Rydberg molecules
• Quantum Zeno suppression of dipole-dipole forces
• Tracking Rydberg atoms with Bose-Einstein Condensates
• Exciton induced directed motion of unconstrained atoms in an ultracold gas
• Supersolid phases of Rydberg-excited bosons on a triangular lattice
• Experimental realization of a 3D long-range random hopping model
• Kato's theorem and ultralong-range Rydberg molecules
• The role of Coulomb anti-blockade in the photoassociation of long-range Rydberg molecules
• Engineering long-range molecular potentials by external drive
• Ultratight confinement of atoms in a Rydberg empowered optical lattice
• Condensate losses and oscillations induced by Rydberg atoms
• Spin-orbit-dependent lifetimes of long-range Rydberg molecules