Three-dimensional trapping of circular Rydberg atoms by a superimposed vortex light beam

Abstract

We propose to trap circular Rydberg atoms (CRAs) by a ponderomotive potential well formed with a superimposed vortex light beam. We calculate analytically the ponderomotive potential energy for a Bessel vortex light beam. We work out a corrected version of the classical circular orbit approximation for a CRA which fits the exact result much better than the usual approximation. We reveal the three-dimensional characteristics of the potential well for some benchmark values of the CRA principal quantum number and beam parameters such as the frequency, the opening angle and topological charge of the vortex. We investigate how we can achieve similar trapping effects for different principal quantum numbers by varying beam parameters. The potential provides a lattice structure in the beam axis where one CRA could be trapped at each lattice site.