Ultracold Chemical Reactions of a Single Rydberg Atom in a Dense Gas

Abstract

Within a dense environment (ρ≈10^{14} atoms/cm^{3}) at ultracold temperatures (T140 compared to 1 μs at n=90. In addition, a second observed reaction mechanism, namely, Rb_{2}^{+} molecule formation, was studied. Both reaction products are equally probable for n=40, but the fraction of Rb_{2}^{+} created drops to below 10% for n≥90.