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Chaotic ionization of nonhydrogenic alkali Rydberg states
1Max-Planck-Institut für Physik komplexer Systeme, Nöthnitzer Strasse 38, D-01187 Dresden, Germany.
Physical Review Letters
|May 1, 2001
Abstract:
We report the first ab initio quantum treatment of microwave driven alkali Rydberg states. We find that nonhydrogenic atomic initial states exhibit fingerprints of classically chaotic excitation, and identify the cause of their experimentally observed enhanced ionization, as compared to Rydberg states of atomic hydrogen.