Photodissociation of long-range Rydberg molecules

In this presentation we will discuss photodissociation of long-range Rydberg molecules (LRMs) [1]. LRMs are bound states of a ground-state atom located within the orbit of a Rydberg electron, where the binding is provided by the Rydberg-electron–ground-state atom scattering interaction. We demonstrate the potential of this new experimental tool by i) performing a complete remote spin flip on a free ground-state atom through the weak interaction with a Rydberg atom and by ii) reconstructing the electronic and vibrational wavefunction of the LRM from projective measurements. In these measurements we exploit the fact that the binding of a LRM depends sensitively on the Rydberg electrons probability density at the position of the ground state atom. By simply transferring the Rydberg electron to an atomic orbital which has a nodal plane containing the internuclear axis, we cancel the first-order binding interactions and project the molecule onto non-interacting atomic fragments. The experiments are performed on LRMs of ³⁹K₂, formed by photoassociation in an ultracold gas of potassium atoms in states correlated to 37P, and photodissociated to free atoms in 35D and the ground state, respectively. The experimental results are quantitatively analyzed by state-of-the-art ab-initio calculations.

[1] M. Peper and J. Deiglmayr, Phys. Rev. A 102, 062819 (2020).