Creation of Rydberg wave packets with femtosecond laser pulses

J. PRECLIKOVA; D. FREGENAL; B.T. HJERTAKER; B. HAMRE; O. FRETTE

Hovs Hallar, Skåne

Conferencia; 12th Nordic femtosecond chemistry conference; 2012

University of Lund

Rydberg atoms are highly excited atoms with electron(s) orbiting far away from the core, e.g.for hydrogen the Bohr radius of level n=25 is 33 nm. Such systems contribute to the understanding of physical behaviour at the 'outer limit' of quantum mechanics. We studied superposition of Rydberg f-states of lithium gas excited by femtosecond (fs) laser pulses from 3d state. The excitation from the ground state 2s into the 3d state was realized by resonant transitions 2s to 2p and 2p to 3d driven by dye nanosecond lasers. The detection of the prepared superposition of the f-states was detected by the selective field ionization (SFI) method. The SFI method is based on applying linearly rising voltage on plates, ionizing the Rydberg atoms and subsequent detecting the created ions by a channeltron detector. This experiment was realized as a pre-step for measurement of dynamics of Rydberg wavepackets by pump and probe technique. The coming plans consider the studying of dynamics of Rydberg wavepackets in electric and magnetic fields after the excitation with tailored fs pulses.