Coherent elliptic states in lithium

Abstract

A detailed comparison between experimental lifetimes for Rydberg atoms formed by the adiabatic crossed-field method and corresponding theoretical lifetimes has been performed to document that the crossed-field method indeed may be used to generate and control coherent elliptic states of highly excited Rydberg atoms. It is found that core effects play a negligible role except for states of very high eccentricity.