April 2012

Conference Paper

Analysis of Circular Wave Packets Generated by Pulsed Electric Fields

By:
Yoshida, S.; Reinhold, Carlos O; Burgdorfer, J.; Wyker, B.; Ye, S.; Dunning, F.
Journal Name:
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms
Page Number:
4-7
Volume:
279
Issue Number:
N/A
Publication Date:
April 18, 2012
Conference Name:
Fifth Conference on Elementary Processes in Atomic Systems
Conference Location:
Belgrade, Serbia
View DOI Listing:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nimb.2011.10.054

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.