Precision measurements using Rydberg atoms and long-range Rydberg molecules
Dr. Johannes W. Deiglmayr (Felix-Bloch Institute, Universität Leipzig)

Exciting an atom or molecule into a high-lying electronic state, a Rydberg state, changes its properties in a drastic, but very well-understood way. While the binding energy of the Rydberg electron decrease with the principal quantum number n as 1/n^2, the orbital radius and transition dipole moments increase as n^2. This results in the electric polarizability increasing as n^7. I will present recent experiments in which we have exploited these scaling laws and exaggerated properties to perform precision measurements of ionization energies with relative accuracies up to 10^11, to characterize precisely static and alternating electric fields, and to reduce the detrimental role of stray fields in applications of Rydberg atoms. In a second part, I’ll discuss our progress towards extracting accurate scattering phase shifts from the spectroscopy of hetero-nuclear long-range Rydberg molecules, which are bound by the interaction of the Rydberg electron with ground-state atoms within its orbit, and how we plan to exploit the exotic properties of long-range Rydberg molecules to create ultracold, strongly correlated plasmas.