Long-range interactions between rubidium and potassium Rydberg atoms

Abstract

We investigate the long-range, two-body interactions between rubidium and potassium atoms in highly excited ($n=70$) Rydberg states. After establishing properly symmetrized asymptotic basis states, we diagonalize an interaction Hamiltonian consisting of the standard Coulombic potential expansion and atomic fine structure to calculate electronic potential energy curves. We find that when both atoms are excited to either the $70s$ state or the $70p$ state, both the $\Omega =0+$ symmetry interactions and the $\Omega =0-$ symmetry interactions demonstrate a deep potential well capable of supporting many bound levels; the size of the corresponding dimer states are on the order of 2.25 $\mu$m. We estabish $n$-scaling relations for the equilibrium separation $R_e$ and the dissociation energy $D_e$ and find these relations to be consistent with similar calculations involving the homonuclear interactions between rubidium and cesium. We discuss the specific effects of $\ell$-mixing and the exact composition of the calculated potential well \textit{via} the expansion coefficients of the asymptotic basis states. Finally, we apply a Landau-Zener treatment to show that the dimer states are stable with respect to predissociation.

8 pages, 4 figures, 4 tables

References in corpus (4)

• Quasiclassical calculations of BBR-induced depopulation rates and effective lifetimes of Rydberg nS, nP and nD alkali-metal atoms with n < 80
• Long-range Rydberg-Rydberg interactions in calcium, strontium and ytterbium
• Long-range potentials and $(n-1)d+ns$ molecular resonances in an ultracold rydberg gas
• Few-Body Bound States of Dipole-Dipole Interacting Rydberg Atoms

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Strong zero-field Förster resonances in K-Rb Rydberg systems