Relaxation of the Excited Rydberg States of Surface Electrons on Liquid Helium

Abstract

We report the first direct observation of the decay of the excited-state population in electrons trapped on the surface of liquid helium. The relaxation dynamics, which are governed by inelastic scattering processes in the system, are probed by the real-time response of the electrons to a pulsed microwave excitation. Comparison with theoretical calculations allows us to establish the dominant mechanisms of inelastic scattering for different temperatures. The longest measured relaxation time is around 1 us at the lowest temperature of 135 mK, which is determined by the inelastic scattering due to the spontaneous two-ripplon emission process. Furthermore, the image-charge response shortly after applying microwave radiation reveals interesting population dynamics due to the multisubband structure of the system.

References in corpus (3)

• Signal and Charge Transfer Efficiency of Few Electrons Clocked on Microscopic Superfluid Helium Channels
• Microwave Absorption of Surface-State Electrons on Liquid ${}^3$He
• Cryogenic amplification of image-charge detection for readout of quantum states of electrons on liquid helium

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• Annular confinement for electrons on liquid helium
• Universal quantum gates by nonadiabatic holonomic evolution for the surface electron
• Thermoelectric transport in a correlated electron system on the surface of liquid helium