Probing van der Waals interactions and detecting polar molecules by Förster resonance energy transfer with Rydberg atoms at temperatures below 100 mK

Abstract

Electric-field-controlled Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) between Rydberg helium (He) atoms and ground-state ammonia (NH${}_3$) molecules has been studied at translational temperatures below 100 mK. The experiments were performed in an intrabeam collision apparatus with pulsed supersonic beams of NH${}_3$ seeded in He. A range of Förster resonances, between triplet Rydberg states in He with principal quantum numbers of 38, 39 and 40, and the inversion intervals in NH${}_3$ were investigated. Resonance widths as low as $100\pm 20$ MHz were observed for Rydberg-Rydberg transitions with electric dipole transition moments of 3270 D. These widths result from binary collisions at a mean center-of-mass speed of $19.3\pm 2.6$ m/s. For transitions in which the initially prepared Rydberg states were strongly polarized, with large induced static electric dipole moments, van der Waals interactions between the collision partners increased the resonance widths to $\sim 750$ MHz. From measurements of the rate of FRET for the narrowest resonances observed, a density of NH${}_3$ of $(9.4\pm 0.3)\times 10^9$ cm${}^{-3}$ in the upper ground-state inversion sublevel in the interaction region of the apparatus was determined non-destructively.

arXiv comment6 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (15)

• Ultracold molecules for quantum simulation: rotational coherences in CaF and RbCs
• Observation of enhanced rate coefficients in the H${}_2^{+}$ + H${}_2$ $\to$ H${}_3^{+}$ + H reaction at low collision energies
• Determining the nature of quantum resonances by probing elastic and reactive scattering in cold collisions
• Observation of correlated excitations in bimolecular collisions
• Atomic Rydberg Reservoirs for Polar Molecules
• Dipole Interaction Mediated Laser Cooling of Polar Molecules to Ultra-cold Temperatures
• Rydberg atom mediated polar molecule interactions: a tool for molecular-state conditional quantum gates and individual addressability
• Electrically tuned Förster resonances in collisions of NH${}_3$ with Rydberg He atoms
• Nondestructive Detection of Polar Molecules via Rydberg Atoms
• Rydberg-State-Resolved Resonant Energy Transfer in Cold Electric-Field-Controlled Intrabeam Collisions of NH${}_3$ with Rydberg He Atoms
• Ultralong-range Rydberg bi-molecules
• State resolved investigation of Förster resonant energy transfer in collisions between polar molecules and Rydberg atoms
• Microwave spectroscopy of the $1\mathrm{s}n\mathrm{p}{}^3{\mathrm{P}}_J$ fine structure of high Rydberg states in ${}^4$He
• Probing resonant energy transfer in collisions of ammonia with Rydberg helium atoms by microwave spectroscopy
• Mean-field energy-level shifts and dielectric properties of strongly polarized Rydberg gases

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Non-adiabatic interaction effects in the spectra of ultralong-range Rydberg molecules