Rydberg molecule-induced remote spin-flips

TL;DR

This study demonstrates how high-resolution spectroscopy of Rydberg molecules can induce remote spin-flips in atoms, revealing entanglement between Rydberg electron orbital angular momentum and nuclear spin, with implications for spin-dependent interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a method to induce remote spin-flips via Rydberg molecules and explores entanglement between Rydberg electron angular momentum and nuclear spin.

Findings

Remote spin-flips can be induced through Rydberg molecule excitation.

Orbital angular momentum of Rydberg electron entangles with nuclear spin.

Results enable new spin-dependent interaction implementations in ultracold systems.

Abstract

We have performed high resolution photoassociation spectroscopy of rubidium ultra long-range Rydberg molecules in the vicinity of the 25$P$ state. Due to the hyperfine interaction in the ground state perturber atom, the emerging mixed singlet-triplet potentials contain contributions from both hyperfine states. We show that this can be used to induce remote spin-flips in the perturber atom upon excitation of a Rydberg molecule. When furthermore the spin-orbit splitting of the Rydberg state is comparable to the hyperfine splitting in the ground state, the orbital angular momentum of the Rydberg electron is entangled with the nuclear spin of the perturber atom. Our results open new possibilities for the implementation of spin-dependent interactions for ultracold atoms in bulk systems and in optical lattices.