Althön Max, Exner Markus, Blättner Richard, Ott Herwig
Department of Physics and Research Center OPTIMAS, Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau, 67663, Kaiserslautern, Germany.
Nat Commun. 2023 Dec 7;14(1):8108. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-43818-7.
In trilobite Rydberg molecules, an atom in the ground state is bound by electron-atom scattering to a Rydberg electron that is in a superposition of high angular momentum states. This results in a homonuclear molecule with a permanent electric dipole moment in the kilo-debye range. Trilobite molecules have previously been observed only with admixtures of low-l states. Here we report on the observation of two vibrational series of pure trilobite Rubidium-Rydberg molecules that are nearly equidistant. They are produced by three-photon photoassociation and lie energetically more than 15 GHz below the atomic 22F state of rubidium. We show that these states can be used to measure the electron-atom scattering length at low energies in order to benchmark current theoretical calculations. In addition to measuring their kilo-Debye dipole moments, we also show that the molecular lifetime is increased compared to the 22F state due to the high-l character. The observation of an equidistant series of vibrational states opens the way to observe coherent molecular wave packet dynamics.
在三叶虫里德堡分子中，处于基态的原子通过电子 - 原子散射与处于高角动量态叠加的里德堡电子相结合。这会形成一个具有千德拜量级永久电偶极矩的同核分子。此前仅在低角动量态混合的情况下观察到三叶虫分子。在此，我们报告了对几乎等间距的两个纯三叶虫铷 - 里德堡分子振动序列的观测。它们由三光子光缔合产生，能量比铷原子的(2^2F)态低超过(15)吉赫兹。我们表明，这些态可用于测量低能下的电子 - 原子散射长度，以便对当前的理论计算进行基准测试。除了测量它们的千德拜偶极矩外，我们还表明，由于高角动量特性，与(2^2F)态相比，分子寿命有所增加。对等间距振动态序列的观测为观察相干分子波包动力学开辟了道路。
