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Updated: Jul 6, 2026

Experimental Methods for Trapping Ions Using Microfabricated Surface Ion Traps
Published on: August 17, 2017
Many-body ionization in a frozen Rydberg gas
Paul J Tanner1, Jianing Han, E S Shuman
1Department of Physics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-0714, USA.
Abstract:
In a dense gas of 300 microK 85Rb atoms of n approximately 50 ionization occurs on a 100 ns time scale, far too fast to be explained by the motion of the atoms or photoionization by 300 K blackbody radiation. Rapid ionization is accompanied by spectral broadening, with the spectrum becoming continuous at n=88 at a density of 5x10(10)cm(-3). The atomic transitions broaden both smoothly and by the emergence of new features, which we attribute to multiple atom absorptions. We attribute the rapid ionization to a sequence of near resonant dipole-dipole transitions through virtual states in this intrinsically many-body system, culminating in the ionization of some of the atoms.
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