Photoassociation of rovibrational Rydberg molecules

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the rotational structure of Rydberg molecules, calculating wave functions and transition matrix elements to understand photoassociation processes and rotational state excitation.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive method to compute wave functions and transition elements for Rydberg molecules, applicable across various molecular states and atomic species.

Findings

Complex shape of nuclear wave functions revealed

Unintuitive coupling strengths depending on angular momenta

Method applicable to different molecular and atomic configurations

Abstract

In this work we discuss the rotational structure of Rydberg molecules. We calculate the complete wave function in a laboratory fixed frame and derive the transition matrix elements for the pho- toassociation of free ground state atoms. We discuss the implications for the excitation of different rotational states as well as the shape of the angular nuclear wave function. We find a rather com- plex shape and unintuitive coupling strengths, depending on the angular momenta coupling that are relevant for the states. This work explains the different steps to calculate the wave functions and the transition matrix elements in a way, that they can be directly transferred to different molecular states, atomic species or molecular coupling cases.