A. L. de Oliveira

Lifetime determination of high excited states of 85Rb using a sample of cold atoms

Abstract A measurement is presented for the radiative lifetime of the 27D state of 85 Rb. The technique uses a sample of cold atoms held in a magneto-optical trap, where Rydberg states (such as the 27D) are excited by a pulsed laser using a two-photon transition from the ground state. The excitation is followed by pulsed field ionization and ion detection. A delay between excitation and ionization allows the exponential decay to be determined, from which the lifetime is extracted. τ 27 D =27.0±0.8 μ s was thus obtained.

Measurement of the lifetimes of S and D states below n=31 using cold Rydberg gas

In this paper we have extended our previous work [de Oliveira et al., Phys. Rev. A 65, 031401 (2002)] by measuring the S and D Rydberg lifetimes for {sup 85}Rb for principal quantum number between n=26 and 31 using a sample of cold Rydberg atoms. This range is limited by the amplitude of the electric field that we can generate in our present setup.