Dynamics of electronic Rydberg wave packets in isolated-core excited atoms

Based on the concept of photon-dressed core states the influence of nonperturbative laser-induced isolated-core excitations on the time evolution of an excited electronic Rydberg wave packet is investigated. In this approach the shake-up process induced by Rabi oscillations of the ionic core is described as repeated scatterings of the excited wave packet between the channels associated with the dressed states of the ionic core. The corresponding scattering matrix and threshold energies of the dressed channels can be controlled externally by varying the laser parameters. The dependence of the wave-packet dynamics on the strength of the laser-induced core coupling and on the difference between the quantum defects of the two bare Rydberg series is worked out.