Atoms excited to a very high energy state
produce a simple spectrum in the light they emit. This was
first measured and described in the late 19th century by the
great German spectroscopist Johannes Rydberg, and in his honor
such highly excited systems are called Rydberg atoms. In such
a state, Rydberg atoms straddle the line between the
microscopic world where quantum mechanics reigns supreme and
the macroscopic world of classical Newtonian physics. This
allows for the experimental realization of a number of
interesting phenomena such as exotic molecules and new states
of matter. In this talk, I will discuss the behavior of these
giant oddities and some of the progress in the field over the
last decade. I will also discuss how we might be able to
harness the properties of Rydberg atoms to develop the next
generation of quantum mechanical broadband radio-frequency
field sensors.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Seth Rittenhouse works in the Physics
Department at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis
Maryland. He received his Ph.D in Physics at the University of
Colorado and the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics
(JILA) in 2009 where his dissertation work focused on
collisions between atoms and molecules at ultracold
temperatures. After a stint as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow
at the Institute for Theoretical Atomic, Molecular, and
Optical Physics (ITAMP) at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics and Harvard University Department of Physics, he
worked at Western Washington University in Washington state
before finally landing in Annapolis. Despite having spent a
significant amount of time at institutions with "Astrophysics"
in their title, he has never done any work in that field.