Observation of effects due to an atom's electric quadrupole polarizability

Abstract

The response of matter to fields underlies the physical sciences, from particle physics to astrophysics, and from chemistry to biophysics. We observe an atom's response to an electric quadrupole field to second- and higher orders; this arises from the atom's electric quadrupole polarizability and hyperpolarizabilities. We probe a single atomic ion which is excited to Rydberg states and confined in the electric fields of a Paul trap. The quadrupolar trapping fields cause atomic energy level shifts and give rise to spectral sidebands. The observed effects are described well by theory calculations.

Main text 4 pages and 3 figures, supplemental material 9 pages and 8 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Trapped Rydberg Ions: From Spin Chains to Fast Quantum Gates
• Sub-microsecond entangling gate between trapped ions via Rydberg interaction
• Coherent control of a single trapped Rydberg ion
• Coulomb crystal mass spectrometry in a digital ion trap
• Probing new physics using Rydberg states of atomic hydrogen
• Rydberg spectrum of a single trapped Ca${}^{+}$ ion: A Floquet analysis

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Trapped Rydberg ions: a new platform for quantum information processing
• Rydberg ions in coherent motional states: A new method for determining the polarizability of Rydberg ions
• Tracking chirality in photoelectron circular dichroism
• Magic trapping of a Rydberg ion with a diminished static polarizability