Browsing by Author "Sadeghpour, H.R."

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    Creation of Rydberg Polarons in a Bose Gas
    (American Physical Society, 2018) Camargo, F.; Schmidt, R.; Whalen, J.D.; Ding, R.; Woehl, G. Jr.; Yoshida, S.; Burgdörfer, J.; Dunning, F.B.; Sadeghpour, H.R.; Demler, E.; Killian, T.C.
    We report spectroscopic observation of Rydberg polarons in an atomic Bose gas. Polarons are created by excitation of Rydberg atoms as impurities in a strontium Bose-Einstein condensate. They are distinguished from previously studied polarons by macroscopic occupation of bound molecular states that arise from scattering of the weakly bound Rydberg electron from ground-state atoms. The absence of a p-wave resonance in the low-energy electron-atom scattering in Sr introduces a universal behavior in the Rydberg spectral line shape and in scaling of the spectral width (narrowing) with the Rydberg principal quantum number, n. Spectral features are described with a functional determinant approach (FDA) that solves an extended Fröhlich Hamiltonian for a mobile impurity in a Bose gas. Excited states of polyatomic Rydberg molecules (trimers, tetrameters, and pentamers) are experimentally resolved and accurately reproduced with a FDA.
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    Lifetimes of ultra-long-range strontium Rydberg molecules
    (American Physical Society, 2016) Camargo, F.; Whalen, J.D.; Ding, R.; Sadeghpour, H.R.; Yoshida, S.; Burgdörfer, J.; Dunning, F.B.; Killian, T.C.
    The lifetimes of the lower-lying vibrational states of ultra-long-range strontium Rydberg molecules comprising one ground-state 5s2 1S0 atom and one Rydberg atom in the 5s38s3S1 state are reported. The molecules are created in an ultracold gas held in an optical dipole trap and their numbers determined using field ionization, the product electrons being detected by a microchannel plate. The measurements show that, in marked contrast to earlier measurements involving rubidium Rydberg molecules, the lifetimes of the low-lying molecular vibrational states are very similar to those of the parent Rydberg atoms. This results because the strong p-wave resonance in low-energy electron-rubidium scattering, which strongly influences the rubidium molecular lifetimes, is not present for strontium. The absence of this resonance offers advantages for experiments involving strontium Rydberg atoms as impurities in quantum gases and for testing of theories of molecular formation and decay.
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    Theory of excitation of Rydberg polarons in an atomic quantum gas
    (American Physical Society, 2018) Schmidt, R.; Whalen, J.D.; Ding, R.; Camargo, F.; Woehl, G. Jr.; Yoshida, S.; Burgdörfer, J.; Dunning, F.B.; Demler, E.; Sadeghpour, H.R.; Killian, T.C.
    We present a quantum many-body description of the excitation spectrum of Rydberg polarons in a Bose gas. The many-body Hamiltonian is solved with a functional determinant approach, and we extend this technique to describe Rydberg polarons of finite mass. Mean-field and classical descriptions of the spectrum are derived as approximations of the many-body theory. The various approaches are applied to experimental observations of polarons created by excitation of Rydberg atoms in a strontium Bose-Einstein condensate.
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    Ultra-long-range Rydberg molecules in a divalent atomic system
    (American Physical Society, 2015) DeSalvo, B.J.; Aman, J.A.; Dunning, F.B.; Killian, T.C.; Sadeghpour, H.R.; Yoshida, S.; Burgdörfer, J.
    We report the creation of ultra-long-range Sr2 molecules comprising one ground-state 5s2 1S0 atom and one atom in a 5sns 3S1 Rydberg state for n ranging from 29 to 36. Molecules are created in a trapped ultracold atomic gas using two-photon excitation near resonant with the 5s5p 3P1 intermediate state, and their formation is detected through ground-state atom loss from the trap. The observed molecular binding energies are reproduced with the aid of first-order perturbation theory that utilizes a Fermi pseudopotential with effective s-wave and p-wave scattering lengths to describe the interaction between an excited Rydberg electron and a ground-state Sr atom.