Ultra-long-range Rydberg Molecules in Ultra-cold Gases

Dr Jia Wang

Department of Physics, University of Connecticut, USA

3:30 pm Wednesday, 30 July 2014, EN101 Lecture Theatre (EN Building), Hawthorn.

Recent developments in ultracold Rydberg gases have led to the prediction and discovery of ultra-long-range Rydberg molecules. A Rydberg atom can interact with a ground state atom and form a bound state, the so called  “trilobite state”', via an oscillatory Born-Oppenheimer potential arising from the frequent low-energy scattering between the Rydberg electron and the ground state atom. This new binding mechanism has attracted a lot of interest, since it is a fundamentally new kind of “chemical bond” and has lead to many experimental applications. In this talk, I am going to discuss our recent prediction of another two kinds of binding mechanism. One utilizes phonon-exchange in a BEC, the other one applies a recent technique called Rydberg-dressing. Both mechanisms provide  more controllability of these ultra-long-range molecules.

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