Metrology of Rydberg states of the hydrogen atom

Abstract

We present a method to precisly measure the frequencies of transitions to high-$n$ Rydberg states of the hydrogen atom which are not subject to uncontrolled systematic shifts caused by stray electric fields. The method consists in recording Stark spectra of the field-insensitive $k=0$ Stark states and the field-sensitive $k=\pm 2$ Stark states, which are used to calibrate the electric field strength. We illustrate this method with measurements of transitions from the $2\text{s}(f=0\text{ and }1)$ hyperfine levels in the presence of intentionally applied electric fields with strengths in the range between $0.4$ and $1.6$Vcm${}^{-1}$. The slightly field-dependent $k=0$ level energies are corrected with a precisely calculated shift to obtain the corresponding Bohr energies $\left(-c{R}_{\mathrm{H}}/n^2\right)$. The energy difference between $n=20$ and $n=24$ obtained with our method agrees with Bohr's formula within the $10$kHz experimental uncertainty. We also determined the hyperfine splitting of the $2\text{s}$ state by taking the difference between transition frequencies from the $2\text{s}(f=0\text{ and }1)$ levels to the $n=20,k=0$ Stark states. Our results demonstrate the possibility of carrying out precision measurements in high-$n$ hydrogenic quantum states.