Non-adiabatic decay of Rydberg-atom-ion molecules

Abstract

The decay of Rydberg-atom-ion molecules (RAIMs) due to non-adiabatic couplings between electronic potential energy surfaces is investigated. We employ the Born-Huang representation and perform numerical simulations using a Crank-Nicolson algorithm. The non-adiabatic lifetimes of rubidium RAIMs for the lowest ten vibrational states, $\nu$, are computed for selected Rydberg principal quantum numbers, $n$. The non-adiabatic lifetimes are found to generally exceed the radiative Rydberg-atom lifetimes. We observe and explain a trend of the lifetimes as a function of $\nu$ and $n$, and attribute irregularities to quantum interference arising from a shallow potential well in an inner potential surface. Our results will be useful for future spectroscopic studies of RAIMs.

7 pages, 3 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (9)

• Quasiclassical calculations of BBR-induced depopulation rates and effective lifetimes of Rydberg nS, nP and nD alkali-metal atoms with n < 80
• Production of trilobite Rydberg molecule dimers with thousand-Debye permanent electric dipole moments
• Experimental characterization of singlet scattering channels in long-range Rydberg molecules
• Observation of Rydberg-atom macrodimers: micrometer-sized diatomic molecules
• Observation of dipole-quadrupole interaction in an ultracold gas of Rydberg atoms
• Long-range atom-ion Rydberg molecule: A novel molecular binding mechanism
• Synthetic dimension-induced conical intersections in Rydberg molecules
• Electric field-induced wave-packet dynamics and geometrical rearrangement of trilobite Rydberg molecules
• Rydberg atom-ion collisions in cold environments

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Spatial imaging of a novel type of molecular ions
• Observation of vibrational dynamics of orientated Rydberg-atom-ion molecules
• Vibronic interactions in trilobite and butterfly Rydberg molecules
• Non-adiabatic interaction effects in the spectra of ultralong-range Rydberg molecules
• Charged ultralong-range Rydberg trimers
• Nonadiabatic decay of metastable states on coupled linear potentials