Measurements of blackbody radiation-induced transition rates between high-lying S, P and D Rydberg levels

Abstract

We report experimental measurements of the rates of blackbody radiation-induced transitions between high-lying (n>60) S, P and D Rydberg levels of rubidium atoms in a magneto-optical trap using a hybrid field ionization and state-selective depumping technique. Our results reveal significant deviations of the measured transition rates from theory for well-defined ranges of the principal quantum number. We assume that the most likely cause for those deviations is a modified blackbody spectrum inside the glass cell in which the magneto-optical trap is formed, and we test this assumption by installing electrodes to create an additional microwave cavity around the cell. From the results we conclude that it should be possible to use such external cavities to control and suppress the blackbody radiation-induced transitions.

9 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (11)

• Many-Body Physics with Individually-Controlled Rydberg Atoms
• Broadband Rydberg Atom-Based Electric-Field Probe: From Self-Calibrated Measurements to Sub-Wavelength Imaging
• Quasiclassical calculations of BBR-induced depopulation rates and effective lifetimes of Rydberg nS, nP and nD alkali-metal atoms with n < 80
• Waveguide-coupled Rydberg spectrum analyzer from 0 to 20 GHz
• Sub-wavelength microwave electric field imaging using Rydberg atoms inside atomic vapor cells
• ARC 3.0: An expanded Python toolbox for atomic physics calculations
• Ionization of Rydberg atoms by blackbody radiation
• Dynamics of Low-Density Ultracold Rydberg Gases
• Quantum Blackbody Thermometry
• Finite size corrections to the blackbody radiation laws
• De-excitation spectroscopy of strongly interacting Rydberg gases

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Millisecond-lived circular Rydberg atoms in a room-temperature experiment
• Primary quantum thermometry of mm-wave blackbody radiation via induced state transfer in Rydberg states of cold atoms
• Quantum Phases from Competing Van der Waals and Dipole-Dipole Interactions of Rydberg Atoms
• Controlled dissipation for Rydberg atom experiments
• Bright and dark Autler-Townes states in the atomic Rydberg multilevel spectroscopy
• The Effect of Magnetization on Electron Heating in Low-Density Ultracold Neutral Plasmas