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arXiv · 1703.01096

Photo-association of trilobite Rydberg molecules via resonant spin-orbit coupling

Kathrin S. Kleinbach·Florian Meinert·Felix Engel·Woo Jin Kwon·Robert Löw·Tilman Pfau·Georg Raithel
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Abstract

We report on a novel method for photo-association of strongly polar trilobite Rydberg molecules. This exotic ultralong-range dimer, consisting of a ground-state atom bound to the Rydberg electron via electron-neutral scattering, inherits its polar character from the admixture of high angular momentum electronic orbitals. The absence of low-$L$ character hinders standard photo-association techniques. Here, we show that for suitable principal quantum numbers resonant coupling of the orbital motion with the nuclear spin of the perturber, mediated by electron-neutral scattering, hybridizes the trilobite molecular potential with the more conventional ${\rm{S}}$-type molecular state. This provides a general path to associate trilobite molecules with large electric dipole moments, as demonstrated via high-resolution spectroscopy. We find a dipole moment of 135(45) D for the trilobite state. Our results are compared to theoretical predictions based on a Fermi-model.

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Kathrin S. Kleinbach, Florian Meinert, Felix Engel, Woo Jin Kwon, Robert Löw, Tilman Pfau, Georg Raithel. 2017-03-03. Photo-association of trilobite Rydberg molecules via resonant spin-orbit coupling. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.118.223001

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