Energy Transport Among Highly-Polarized Atoms

A static electric field of a few V/cm shifts the energy levels of ultracold Rydberg atoms in a magneto-optical trap. For a given principle quantum number, most of the energy levels are nearly degenerate at zero field and fan out with increasing field to form a manifold. We excite Rydberg atoms to en...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors Opsahl, Catherine D, Jiang, Yuan, Grubb, Samantha A, Okinaka, Alan T, Chlanda, Nicolaus A, Conley, Hannah S, Kirk, Aidan D, Spielman, Sarah E, Carroll, Thomas J, Noel, Michael W
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published 31.07.2024
Subjects
Physics - Atomic Physics
Physics - Quantum Physics
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Summary:A static electric field of a few V/cm shifts the energy levels of ultracold Rydberg atoms in a magneto-optical trap. For a given principle quantum number, most of the energy levels are nearly degenerate at zero field and fan out with increasing field to form a manifold. We excite Rydberg atoms to energy levels near the center of the manifold, where the spacing is nearly harmonic, and allow them to exchange energy via resonant dipole-dipole interactions. We measure the time evolution as energy spreads away from the center of the manifold, which reveals that the system fails to thermalize for long interaction times. A computational model that includes only a few essential features of the system qualitatively agrees with this result.
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2407.21764