Experimental demonstration of a Rydberg-atom beam splitter

Abstract

Inhomogeneous electric fields generated above two-dimensional electrode structures have been used to transversely split beams of helium Rydberg atoms into pairs of spatially separated components. The atomic beams had initial longitudinal speeds of between 1700 and 2000 m/s and were prepared in Rydberg states with principle quantum number $n=52$ and electric dipole moments of up to 8700 D by resonance-enhanced two-color two-photon laser excitation from the metastable 1s2s ${}^3$S${}_1$ level. Upon exiting the beam splitter the ensembles of Rydberg atoms were separated by up to 15.6 mm and were detected by pulsed electric field ionization. Effects of amplitude modulation of the electric fields of the beam splitter were shown to cause particle losses through transitions into unconfined Rydberg-Stark states.

6 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Observation of enhanced rate coefficients in the H${}_2^{+}$ + H${}_2$ $\to$ H${}_3^{+}$ + H reaction at low collision energies
• Transmission-line decelerators for atoms in high Rydberg states
• Probing interactions between Rydberg atoms with large electric dipole moments in amplitude modulated electric fields

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Slow decay processes of electrostatically trapped Rydberg NO molecules
• Matter-wave interferometry with atoms in high Rydberg states
• Confinement of high- and low-field-seeking Rydberg atoms using time-varying inhomogeneous electric fields
• Shaping Long-lived Electron Wavepackets for Customizable Optical Spectra