Abstract
Beams of helium atoms in Rydberg states with principal quantum number , and traveling with an initial speed of 1950 m/s, have been accelerated, decelerated, and guided while confined in moving electric traps generated above a curved, surface-based electrical transmission line with a segmented center conductor. Experiments have been performed with atoms guided at constant speed, and with accelerations exceeding . In each case, the manipulated atoms were detected by spatially resolved, pulsed electric field ionization. The effects of tangential and centripetal accelerations on the effective trapping potentials experienced by the atoms in the decelerator have been studied, with the resulting observations highlighting contributions from the density of excited Rydberg atoms to the acceleration, deceleration, and guiding efficiencies in the experiments.
3 More- Received 26 August 2014
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.90.053420
©2014 American Physical Society