Formation of ultracold ion pairs through long-range Rydberg molecules

Abstract

We propose a new approach to excite ion-pair states of ultracold dimers. The central idea is a two-step process where first long-range Rydberg molecules are formed by photoassociation, which are then driven by stimulated emission towards the ion-pair state, a process bearing features of a photo-induced harpooning reaction. We assess the feasibility of this approach through a detailed experimental and theoretical study on a specific system, p-wave-scattering dominated long-range Rydberg molecules in caesium, and discuss potential applications for the study of strongly correlated plasmas consisting of oppositely charged particles of equal or similar mass.

Accepted for publication in J. Phys. B: Special Issue on Interacting Rydberg atoms (2019)

References in corpus (5)

• Experimental characterization of singlet scattering channels in long-range Rydberg molecules
• Spontaneous avalanche ionization of a strongly blockaded Rydberg gas
• Reactive collisions of trapped anions with ultracold atoms
• Precision measurement of the ionization energy and quantum defects of 39K I
• Simulations of an ultracold, neutral plasma with equal masses

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Dressed ion-pair states of an ultralong-range Rydberg molecule
• Electric field-induced wave-packet dynamics and geometrical rearrangement of trilobite Rydberg molecules
• Green's function treatment of Rydberg molecules with spins
• Individual assembly of two-species Rydberg molecules using optical tweezers
• The role of Coulomb anti-blockade in the photoassociation of long-range Rydberg molecules
• Spin-orbit-dependent lifetimes of long-range Rydberg molecules