English

$C_6$ coefficients for interacting Rydberg atoms and alkali-metal dimers

Atomic Physics 2020-04-01 v1

Abstract

We study the van der Waals interaction between Rydberg alkali-metal atoms with fine structure (n2Ljn^2L_j; L2L\leq 2) and heteronuclear alkali-metal dimers in the ground rovibrational state (X1Σ+X^1\Sigma^+; v=0v=0, J=0J=0). We compute the associated C6C_6 dispersion coefficients of atom-molecule pairs involving 133^{133}Cs and 85^{85}Rb atoms interacting with KRb, LiCs, LiRb, and RbCs molecules. The obtained dispersion coefficients can be accurately fitted to a state-dependent polynomial O(n7)O(n^7) over the range of principal quantum numbers 40n15040\leq n\leq 150. For all atom-molecule pairs considered, Rydberg states n2Sjn^2S_j and n2Pjn^2P_j result in attractive 1/R61/R^6 potentials. In contrast, n2Djn^2D_j states can give rise to repulsive potentials for specific atom-molecule pairs. The interaction energy at the LeRoy distance approximately scales as n5n^{-5} for n>40n>40. For intermediate values of n40n\lesssim40, both repulsive and attractive interaction energies in the order of 10100μ 10-100 \,\muK can be achieved with specific atomic and molecular species. The accuracy of the reported C6C_6 coefficients is limited by the quality of the atomic quantum defects, with relative errors ΔC6/C6\Delta C_6/C_6 estimated to be no greater than 1\% on average.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1912.01568,
  title  = {$C_6$ coefficients for interacting Rydberg atoms and alkali-metal dimers},
  author = {Vanessa Olaya and Jesús Pérez-Ríos and Felipe Herrera},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.01568},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

14 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables. SM available upon request