Related papers: Hybridization of Rydberg electron orbitals by mole…
Atoms with a highly excited electron, called Rydberg atoms, can form unusual types of molecular bonds. The bond differs from the well known ionic and covalent bonds not only by its binding mechanism, but also by its bond length ranging up…
Rydberg dressing traditionally refers to a technique where interactions between cold atoms are imprinted through the far off-resonant continuous-wave excitation of high-lying Rydberg states. Dipolar interactions between these electronic…
We investigate the non-adiabatic quantum dynamics of ultralong-range Rydberg molecules using a vibronically coupled two-channel treatment. The two channels are composed of coupled trilobite and butterfly electronic states, formed as a…
Quantum reflection is a pure wave phenomena that predicts reflection of a particle at a changing potential for cases where complete transmission occurs classically. For a chemical bond, we find that this effect can lead to non-classical…
We investigate the dynamics of Rydberg electrons excited from the ground state of ultracold atoms trapped in an optical lattice. We first consider a lattice comprising an array of double-well potentials, where each double well is occupied…
Ultralong-range Rydberg molecules (ULRM) are highly imbalanced bound systems formed via the low-energy scattering of a Rydberg electron with a ground-state atom. We investigate for $^{23}$Na the $d$-state and the energetically close-by…
We present photodissociation of ultracold long-range Rydberg molecules as a tool to characterize their electronic properties. We photoassociate K2 37P molecules with highly entangled electronic and nuclear spins of the two bound atoms and…
We investigate theoretically the long-range electrostatic interactions between a ground-state homonuclear alkali-metal dimer and an excited alkali-metal atom taking into account its fine-structure. The interaction involves the combination…
Within a dense environment ($\rho \approx 10^{14}\,$atoms/cm$^3$) at ultracold temperatures ($T < 1\,\mu{}\text{K}$), a single atom excited to a Rydberg state acts as a reaction center for surrounding neutral atoms. At these temperatures…
Since their first experimental observation, ultralong-range Rydberg molecules consisting of a highly excited Rydberg atom and a ground state atom have attracted the interest in the field of ultracold chemistry. Especially the intriguing…
We report the sudden and spontaneous evolution of an initially correlated gas of repulsively interacting Rydberg atoms to an ultracold plasma. Under continuous laser coupling we create a Rydberg ensemble in the strong blockade regime, which…
We examine interactions between atoms continuously and coherently driven between the ground state and a Rydberg state, producing "Rydberg-dressed atoms." Because of the large dipolar coupling between two Rydberg atoms, a small admixture of…
Stability achieved by large angular momentum is ubiquitous in nature, with examples ranging from classical mechanics, over optics and chemistry, to nuclear physics. In atoms, angular momentum can protect excited electronic orbitals from…
We propose a Rydberg molecule dressing scheme to create strong and long-ranged interactions at selective distances. This is achieved through laser coupling ground-state atoms off-resonantly to an attractive molecular curve of two…
We discuss laser dressed dipolar and Van der Waals interactions between atoms and polar molecules, so that a cold atomic gas with laser admixed Rydberg levels acts as a designed reservoir for both elastic and inelastic collisional…
We present high-resolution spectroscopy of Rb$_\text{2}$ ultralong-range Rydberg molecules bound by mixed singlet-triplet electron-neutral atom scattering. The mixing of the scattering channels is a consequence of the hyperfine interaction…
A ground state atom immersed in the wave function of the valence electron of a Rydberg atom can generate a long-range Rydberg molecule (LRRM). In this work, using the multipole expansion of the electrostatic interaction in prolate…
We analyze in detail the possibility to use charge-dipole interaction between a single polar molecule or a 1D molecular array and a single Rydberg atom to read out rotational populations. The change in the Rydberg electron energy is…
Cold, dense Rydberg gases produced in a cold-atom trap are investigated using spectroscopic methods and time-resolved electron counting. On the discrete Rydberg resonances we observe large trap losses and long lasting electron emission from…
We report the creation of an interacting cold Rydberg gas of strontium atoms. We show that the excitation spectrum of the inner valence electron is sensitive to the interactions in the Rydberg gas, even though they are mediated by the outer…