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Schlagwörter:
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MPIPKS:
Ultracold matter
Zusammenfassung:
Assemblies of highly excited Rydberg atoms in an ultracold gas can be set into motion by a combination of van der Waals and resonant dipole-dipole interactions. Thereby, the collective electronic Rydberg state might change due to nonadiabatic transitions, in particular if the configuration encounters a conical intersection. For the experimentally most accessible scenario, in which the Rydberg atoms are initially randomly excited in a three-dimensional bulk gas under blockade conditions, we numerically show that nonadiabatic transitions can be common when starting from the most energetic repulsive Born-Oppenheimer surface. We outline how this state can be selectively excited using a microwave resonance, and demonstrate a regime where almost all collisional ionization of Rydberg atoms can be traced back to a prior nonadiabatic transition. Since Rydberg ionization is relatively straightforward to detect, the excitation and measurement scheme considered here renders nonadiabatic effects in Rydberg motion easier to demonstrate experimentally than in scenarios considered previously.
