Physics

We present a novel ultrastable superconducting radio-frequency (RF) ion trap realized as a combination of an RF cavity and a linear Paul trap. Its RF quadrupole mode at 34.52 MHz reaches a quality factor of Q??.3? 10 5 at a temperature of 4.1 K and is used to radially confine ions in an ultralow-noise pseudopotential. This concept is expected to strongly suppress motional heating rates and related frequency shifts which limit the ultimate accuracy achieved in advanced ion traps for frequency metrology. Running with its low-vibration cryogenic cooling system, electron beam ion trap and deceleration beamline supplying highly charged ions (HCI), the superconducting trap offers ideal conditions for optical frequency metrology with ionic species. We report its proof-of-principle operation as a quadrupole mass filter with HCI, and trapping of Doppler-cooled 9 Be + Coulomb crystals.

We present three explicit formulas for the number of electronic configurations in an atom, i.e. the number of ways to distribute Q electrons in N subshells of respective degeneracies g 1 , g 2 , ..., g N . The new expressions are obtained using the generating-function formalism. The first one contains sums involving multinomial coefficients. The second one relies on the idea of gathering subshells having the same degeneracy. A third one also collects subshells with the same degeneracy and leads to the definition of a two-variable generating function, allowing the derivation of recursion relations. Concerning the distribution of population on N distinct subshells of a given degeneracy g , analytical expressions for the first moments of this distribution are given. The general case of subshells with any degeneracy is analyzed through the computation of cumulants. A fairly simple expression for the cumulants at any order is provided, as well as the cumulant generating function. Using Gram-Charlier expansion, simple approximations of the analyzed distribution in terms of a normal distribution multiplied by a sum of Hermite polynomials are given. The Edgeworth expansion has also been tested. Its accuracy is equivalent to the Gram-Charlier accuracy when few terms are kept, but it is much more rapidly divergent when the truncation order increases. While this analysis is illustrated by examples in atomic supershells it also applies to more general combinatorial problems such as fermion distributions.

The present work focuses on the characterisation of the amount of orbital angular momentum (OAM) encoded in the twisted attosecond pulses via energy- and angle-resolved attosecond streaking in pump-probe setup. It is found that the photoelectron spectra generated by the linearly polarised twisted pulse with different OAM values exhibit angular modulations, whereas circularly polarised twisted pulse yields angular isotropic spectra. It is demonstrated that the energy- and angle-resolved streaking spectra are sensitive to the OAM values of the twisted pulse. Moreover, the different combinations of the polarisation of the twisted pump pulse and strong infrared probe pulse influence the streaking spectra differently. The characterisation of the OAM carrying twisted attosecond pulses opens up the possibility to explore helical light-matter interaction on attosecond timescale.

We present an experimental study on the photoionization dynamics of non-resonant one-color two-photon single valence ionization of neutral argon atoms. Using 9.3 eV photons produced via high harmonic generation and a 3-D momentum imaging spectrometer, we detect the photoelectrons and ions produced from non-resonant two-photon ionization in coincidence. Photoionization from the 3p orbital produces a photoelectron scattering wave function with p and f partial wave components, which interfere and result in a photoelectron angular distribution with peak amplitude perpendicular to the VUV polarization. The comparison between the present results and two previous sets of theoretical calculations [Pan, C. & Starace, A. F. (1991). Physical Review A , 44(1), 324., and Moccia, R., Rahman, N. K., & Rizzo, A. (1983). Journal of Physics B: Atomic and Molecular Physics , 16(15), 2737.] indicates that electron-electron correlation contributes appreciably to the two-photon ionization dynamics.

Recent angle-resolved RABBITT experiments have shown that the photoionization time delay depends on the emission angle of the photoelectron. In this work we demonstrate that for photoemission from helium accompanied by shake-up (correlation satellites), the angular variation of the time delay is dramatically enhanced by the dipolar coupling between the photoelectron and the highly polarizable bound electron in the IR field. We show that the additivity rule for the time delays due to the atomic potential, the continuum-continuum (cc) coupling by the IR field, and due to this two-electron process remains valid for angle-resolved RABBITT. Our results are expected to be also applicable to other multi-electron systems that are highly polarizable or feature a permanent dipole moment.

More than 100 years after its discovery and its explanation in the energy domain, the duration of the photoelectric effect is still heavily studied. The emission time of a photoelectron can be quantified by the Wigner time delay. Experiments addressing this time delay for single-photon ionization became feasible during the last 10 years. A missing piece, which has not been studied, so far, is the Wigner time delay for strong-field ionization of molecules. Here we show experimental data on the Wigner time delay for tunnel ionization of H 2 molecules and demonstrate its dependence on the emission direction of the electron with respect to the molecular axis. We find, that the observed changes in the Wigner time delay can be quantitatively explained by elongated/shortened travel paths of the electrons that are due to spatial shifts of the electron's birth position after tunneling. This introduces an intuitive perspective towards the Wigner time delay in strong-field ionization.

We investigated experimentally and theoretically angular momentum alignment-to-orientation conversion created by the joint interaction of laser radiation and an external magnetic field with atomic rubidium at room temperature. In particular we were interested in alignment-to-orientation conversion in atomic ground state. Experimentally the laser frequency was fixed to the hyperfine transitions of D 1 line of rubidium. We used a theoretical model for signal simulations that takes into account all neighboring hyperfine levels, the mixing of magnetic sublevels in an external magnetic field, the coherence properties of the exciting laser radiation, and the Doppler effect. The experiments were carried out by exciting the atoms with linearly polarized laser radiation. Two oppositely circularly polarized laser induced fluorescence (LIF) components were detected and afterwards their difference was taken. The combined LIF signals originating from the hyperfine magnetic sublevel transitions of 85 Rb and 87 Rb rubidium isotopes were included. The alignment-to-orientation conversion can be undoubtedly identified in the difference signals for various laser frequencies as well as change in signal shapes can be observed when the laser power density is increased. We studied the formation and the underlying physical processes of the observed signal of the LIF components and their difference by performing the analysis of the influence of incoherent and coherent effects. We performed simulations of theoretical signals that showed the influence of ground-state coherent effects on the LIF difference signal.

In two dimensions, a system of self-gravitating particles collapses and forms a singularity in finite time below a critical temperature T c . We investigate experimentally a quasi two-dimensional cloud of cold neutral atoms in interaction with two pairs of perpendicular counter-propagating quasi-resonant laser beams, in order to look for a signature of this ideal phase transition: indeed, the radiation pressure forces exerted by the laser beams can be viewed as an anisotropic, and non-potential, generalization of two-dimensional self-gravity. We first show that our experiment operates in a parameter range which should be suitable to observe the collapse transition. However, the experiment unveils only a moderate compression instead of a phase transition between the two phases. A three-dimensional numerical simulation shows that both the finite small thickness of the cloud, which induces a competition between the effective gravity force and the repulsive force due to multiple scattering, and the atomic losses due to heating in the third dimension, contribute to smearing the transition.

Atomic nuclei can be spontaneously deformed into non-spherical shapes as many-nucleon systems. We discuss to what extent a similar deformation takes place in many-electron systems. To this end, we employ several many-body methods, such as the unrestricted Hartree-Fock method, post-Hartree-Fock methods, and the density functional theory, to compute the electron distribution in atoms. We show that the electron distribution of open-shell atoms is deformed due solely to the single-particle valence orbitals, while the core part remains spherical. This is in contrast to atomic nuclei, which can be deformed collectively. We qualitatively discuss the origin for this apparent difference between atoms and nuclei by estimating the energy change due to deformation. We find that nature of the interaction plays an essential role for the collective deformation.

The impact of the short-range interaction on the resonances occurrence in the anisotropic dipolar scattering in a plane was numerically investigated for the arbitrarily oriented dipoles and for a wide range of collision energies. We revealed the strong dependence of the cross section of the 2D dipolar scattering on the radius of short-range interaction, which is modeled by a hard wall potential and by the more realistic Lennard-Jones potential, and on the mutual orientations of the dipoles. We defined the critical (magic) tilt angle of one of the dipoles, depending on the direction of the second dipole for arbitrarily oriented dipoles. It was found that resonances arise only when this angle is exceeded. In contrast to the 3D case, the energy dependencies of the boson (fermion) 2D scattering cross section grows (is reduced) with an energy decrease in the absence of the resonances. We showed that the mutual orientation of dipoles strongly impacts the form of the energy dependencies, which begin to oscillate with the tilt angle increase, unlike the 3D dipolar scattering. The angular distributions of the differential cross section in the 2D dipolar scattering of both bosons and fermions are highly anisotropic at non-resonant points. The results of the accurate numerical calculations of the cross section agree well with the results obtained within the Born and eikonal approximations.