Manipulation of quantum state transfer in cold Rydberg atom collisions

We investigate the role of the dc Stark effect in multilevel pairwise interactions between cold Rydberg atoms. We have observed the decay of nD + nD quasi-molecules by detecting the products in the (n + 2) P state after pulsed excitation for 29 <= n <= 41. The decay rate can be manipulated with a dc electric field and requires a consideration of the multilevel nature of the process to explain the observations. The time dependence of the (n + 2) P signal is found to support a time-dependent picture of the dynamics.

FAPESP

CNPq

INCT-IQ

AFOSR[FA9550-09-1-0503]

ARO[W911NF-08-1-0257]

National Science Foundation NSF[PHY-0855324]

National Science Foundation NSF[OISE-0756321]