2010/11/25 by Sebastian Wüster, S. Wüster, Alexander Eisfeld +3 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Adiabatic process #Advanced Chemical Physics Studies #Atomic physics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Conical intersection #Conical surface #Dipole #Excitation #Geometric phase #Materials science #Molecular physics #Physics #Potential energy #Quantum decoherence #Quantum mechanics #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #Rydberg formula #Trimer #physics.atom-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.106.153002
4 pages, 4 figures, replacement to add archive reference
arxiv created 2010/11/25 · openalex publication_date 2011/04/12 · arxiv updated 2013/05/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We find that energy surfaces of more than two atoms or molecules interacting via transition dipole-dipole potentials generically possess conical intersections (CIs). Typically only few atoms participate strongly in such an intersection. For the fundamental case, a circular trimer, we show how the CI affects adiabatic excitation transport via electronic decoherence or geometric phase interference. These phenomena may be experimentally accessible if the trimer is realized by light alkali atoms in a ring trap, whose interactions are induced by off-resonant dressing with Rydberg states. Such a setup promises a direct probe of the full many-body density dynamics near a CI.