Publication Type
Conference Paper
Journal Name
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms
Publication Date
Page Numbers
4 to 7
Volume
279
Conference Name
Fifth Conference on Elementary Processes in Atomic Systems
Conference Location
Belgrade, Serbia
Conference Date
-
Abstract
We demonstrate that circular wave packets in high Rydberg states generated
using a pulsed electric field applied to extreme Stark states are characterized
by a position-dependent energy gradient that leads to a correlation between
the principal quantum number n and the spatial coordinate. This correlation
is rather insensitive to the initial state and can be seen even in an incoherent
mix of states such as is generated experimentally allowing information
to be placed into, and extracted from, such wavepackets. We show that detailed
information on the spatial distribution of a circular wave packet can
be extracted by analyzing the complex phase of its expansion coefficient.