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Measurement of Ultrafast Vibrational Coherences in Polyatomic Radical Cations with Strong-Field Adiabatic Ionization
Published on: August 6, 2018
Microwave spectroscopy of fine-structure-mixed cesium Rydberg macrodimers
Jingxu Bai1,2, Zhenhua Li1, Rong Song1
1State Key Laboratory of Quantum Optics Technologies and Devices, Institute of Laser Spectroscopy, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, People's Republic of China. ycjiao@sxu.edu.cn.
None:
Rydberg macrodimers, bound states between Rydberg atoms, feature bond lengths in the micrometer regime, possessing a number of remarkable characteristics. In this work, we conducted a detailed study of the microwave spectroscopy of cesium (n + 2)D5/2nFJ Rydberg macrodimers with 40 ≤ n ≤ 48 (n is the principal quantum number), which are bound by strong dipolar flip and cross couplings. A microwave field couples the laser excited (n + 2)D5/2 Rydberg state and the nearby nFJ state, forming a fine-structure-mixed long-range (n + 2)D5/2nFJ Rydberg macrodimer. The state-selective field ionization technique is employed to measure the microwave spectra of the Rydberg macrodimer, from which we extract the relative molecular energy, scaling with the effective principal quantum number as (neff)-2.82(10). Taking into account the multipole interactions and Rydberg fine-structure interaction, we calculate the adiabatic potential curves and corresponding vibrational energy levels. The calculated molecular potentials are in good agreement with the measured microwave spectra. Our results provide a quantitative spectroscopic characterization of fine-structure-mixed cesium Rydberg macrodimers and demonstrate microwave spectroscopy as a useful tool for probing long-range Rydberg molecules.
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