Spatial imaging of a novel type of molecular ions

Abstract

Atoms with a highly excited electron, called Rydberg atoms, can form unusual types of molecular bonds. The bond differs from the well known ionic and covalent bonds not only by its binding mechanism, but also by its bond length ranging up to several micrometres. Here, we observe a new type of molecular ion based on the interaction between the ionic charge and a flipping induced dipole of a Rydberg atom with a bond length of several micrometres. We measure the vibrational spectrum and spatially resolve the bond length and the angular alignment of the molecule using a high-resolution ion microscope. As a consequence of the large bond length, the molecular dynamics is extremely slow. These results pave the way for future studies of spatio-temporal effects in molecular dynamics, e.g., beyond Born-Oppenheimer physics.

References in corpus (4)

• Many-Body Physics with Individually-Controlled Rydberg Atoms
• Observation of mesoscopic crystalline structures in a two-dimensional Rydberg gas
• Inelastic collision dynamics of a single cold ion immersed in a Bose-Einstein condensate
• Charge dynamics of a molecular ion immersed in a Rydberg-dressed atomic lattice gas

Cited by in corpus (21)

• Field-linked resonances of polar molecules
• Cold trapped molecular ions and hybrid platforms for ions and neutral particles
• 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
• Electric field analysis in a cold-ion source using Stark spectroscopy of Rydberg atoms
• Rydberg Macrodimers: Diatomic molecules on the micrometer scale
• Hyperfine Structure of $n{P}_{1/2}$ Rydberg States in ${}^{85}$Rb
• Microwave photo-association of fine-structure-induced Rydberg $(n+2)D_{5/2}n{F}_J$ macro-dimer molecules of cesium
• Charged ultralong-range Rydberg trimers
• The role of Coulomb anti-blockade in the photoassociation of long-range Rydberg molecules
• Spectroscopy of the ${}^{85}$Rb 4$D_{3/2}$ state for hyperfine-structure determination
• In situ observation of chemistry in Rydberg molecules within a coherent solvent
• Ultracold Interactions between Ions and Polar Molecules
• Cold hybrid electrical-optical ion trap
• Internal diffraction dynamics of trilobite molecules
• $In$ $situ$ observation of non-polar to strongly polar atom-ion collision dynamics
• Series of molecular-like doubly excited states of a quasi-three-body Coulomb system
• Cooling dynamics of a free ion in a Bose-Einstein condensate
• Vibrationally coupled Rydberg atom-ion molecules
• Tomography of a single-atom-resolved detector in the presence of shot-to-shot number fluctuations