Autoionizing Rydberg states of NO in strong electric fields

The spectroscopy of bound and predissociating Rydberg states of NO in external electric fields

This thesis reports the application of static and ramped electric fields to the Rydberg states of NO. Chapter 1 introduces the history of Rydberg states, their exotic properties, decay mechanisms, and the effect of an applied electric field. Chapter 2 details the experimental set-up used for the experiments presented in this thesis. Chapter 3 describes the structure of NO and multiphoton excita...

Simulation of motion and radiative decay of Rydberg hydrogen atoms in electric and magnetic fields

We have simulated the motion of a Rydberg hydrogen atom in electric and magnetic fields that have a strong position dependence. The orientation and strengths of the fields depend strongly on the spatial position of the atom. The angle between the fields could take on any value. We use the quantum energy levels for a Rydberg state in electric and magnetic fields to derive a spatially dependent p...

Explorer Excitation , dynamics , and control of rotationally autoionizing Rydberg states

Optical–optical double-resonance spectroscopy of autoionizing states of water

Double resonance excitation of vibrationally autoionizing states of the water molecule has been performed for the first time. Tunable, coherent vacuum ultraviolet light was used to excite selected rotational levels of the C̃ B1 state with one quantum of symmetric stretch vibrational energy ~100!, from which ~100! Rydberg states were excited with a second dye laser. The Rydberg character of the C̃...

Magnetic trapping of strongly-magnetized Rydberg atoms

Effective magnetic moments of drift Rydberg atoms in strong magnetic fields are obtained for different energy and angular-momentum states. Classical two-body trajectory calculations and quantummechanical one-body calculations are employed. For heavy atoms such as rubidium, the trapping dynamics can largely be explained by the net magnetic moment due to the cyclotron and the magnetron motion of ...