Ultracold long-range van der Waals Rydberg trimer

2025/02/14 by Mateo Londoño, Vanessa C. Olaya-Agudelo, Londoño, Mateo +5
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2502.10555

openalex publication_date 2025/02/14 · openalex created_date 2025/02/19 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

Abstract

Rydberg molecules, Rydberg-atom or Rydberg-molecule, are an essential ingredient of cold molecular sciences. However, due to the richness of Rydberg-neutral interactions, new kinds of Rydberg molecules and binding mechanisms are still to be discovered. In this work, we predict the existence of ultra-long-range van der Waals trimers in dilute atom-gas mixtures. These are bound states of a Rydberg atom and a diatomic polar molecule mediated by the long-range van der Waals interaction. This new binding mechanism gives rise to trimers with sizes between 5-500~nm and binding energies between 2 MHz and 0.2 kHz depending on the atomic principal quantum number n and orbital angular momentum L. We show that these molecules can be produced via two-photon photoassociation, with rates on the order of (10^-13 - 10^-11) cm³s^-1 for temperatures in the range of (0.5 μK - 10μK), and discuss the feasibility of observing trimer resonances.

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