Electrostatic trapping and in situ detection of Rydberg atoms above chip-based transmission lines

Abstract

Beams of helium atoms in Rydberg-Stark states with principal quantum number $n=48$ and electric dipole moments of 4600~D have been decelerated from a mean initial longitudinal speed of 2000~m/s to zero velocity in the laboratory-fixed frame-of-reference in the continuously moving electric traps of a transmission-line decelerator. In this process accelerations up to $-1.3\times 10^7$~m/s${}^2$ were applied, and changes in kinetic energy of $\Delta E_{\mathrm{kin}}=1.3\times 10^{-20}$~J ($\Delta E_{\mathrm{kin}}/e=83$~meV) per atom were achieved. Guided and decelerated atoms, and those confined in stationary electrostatic traps, were detected in situ by pulsed electric field ionisation. The results of numerical calculations of particle trajectories within the decelerator have been used to characterise the observed deceleration efficiencies, and aid in the interpretation of the experimental data.

arXiv comment13 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Driving Rydberg-Rydberg transitions from a co-planar microwave waveguide
• Trapping molecules on a chip in traveling potential wells
• Electric field sensing near the surface microstructure of an atom chip using cold Rydberg atoms
• Manipulating Rydberg atoms close to surfaces at cryogenic temperatures
• Transmission-line decelerators for atoms in high Rydberg states
• Probing interactions between Rydberg atoms with large electric dipole moments in amplitude modulated electric fields
• Imaging Cold Molecules on a Chip

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• Preparation of circular Rydberg states in helium using the crossed fields method
• Confinement of high- and low-field-seeking Rydberg atoms using time-varying inhomogeneous electric fields
• Matter-wave interferometry with atoms in high Rydberg states
• Electrostatic trapping of N${}_2$ molecules in high Rydberg states