Binary process in Rydberg atoms

Author(s)

Lucas Larcher Caliri

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Carlos.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Física de São Carlos (IFSC/BT)
• Defense date: 2006-12-21

Examining board members

Luis Gustavo Marcassa; Luis Eduardo Evangelista de Araujo; Lidério Citrangulo Ioriatti Junior

• Advisor: Luis Gustavo Marcassa

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to address some of the characteristics of collisional processes in ultracold Rydberg atoms. With a Maqneto-Optical Trap (MOT), we trapped a sample of 85Rb, an alkaline metal element, in a region of about lmm at a temperature of a few hundreds of ?K, known in the literature as the \"ultracold\" regime. The 85Rb atoms are then excited to high principal quantum number states, also known as Rydberg states, with a pulsed laser. In these states, the atoms present exaggerated properties due to the large valence electron orbit, such as long-range potentials in our experiments, after excitation, we have detected atoms in neighboring states to the originally excited state, an evidence of atomic transitions. Since these states have similar energy, the presence of long-range potentials can make the energy of a pair of atoms in the initial state be resonant with the energy of the same pair in a combination of different states, making it possible to have transitions to these nearby states. Our work tries to quantify these observations, as well as to gauge the role of atomic movement in these transitions. (AU)