Wavepacket dynamics of a Rydberg atom monitored by a pair of time-delayed laser pulses

Abstract

We have investigated the Rydberg state population of an argon atom by an intense laser pulse and its wavepacket dynamics monitored by another successive laser pulse in the tunneling regime. A wavepacket comprising a superposition of close high-lying Rydberg states is irradiated by a multicycle laser pulse, where the sub-wave components in the wavepacket have fixed relative phases. A time-delayed second laser pulse is employed to apply on the excited Rydberg atom. If the time is properly chosen, one of the sub-wave components will be guided towards the ionization area while the rest remains intact. By means of this pump–probe technique, we could control and monitor the Rydberg wavepacket dynamics and reveal some interesting phenomenon such as the survival rate of individual Rydberg states related to the classical orbital period of electron.