Electron lattice potentials for ultracold atoms using circular Rydberg orbitals
Abstract
Recent advances in experiments using individually trapped atoms have enabled precise control over circular Rydberg electrons with exceptionally long lifetimes. We show that these giant and stable electron orbits can form toroidal lattice potentials for ultracold atoms with a period set by the electron's de Broglie wavelength. Unlike conventional static optical lattices, this electron lattice is formed via the electron-atom interaction, which mixes Rydberg circular states with opposite azimuthal phase winding into a standing electronic matter wave. The lattice phase is thereby intrinsically coupled to the atom position. For a pair of atoms, this results in ballistic tunneling motion in the two-atom spatial correlations along the ring, while the single particle dynamics is essentially free rotation. We simulate the dynamics for an experimentally realistic setting that exploits optical tweezers for individual atom control. Our results open a route toward incorporating long range atom-atom interactions mediated by a single electron and, ultimately, realizing small Bose and Fermi gases confined in these microscopic electronic atom traps.
Related
- Localized orbitals and tunnel couplings from general confinement potentials in gate-defined quantum-dot arrays
- Computing electron overlap integrals for Gausslet orbitals on cubic lattices
- Dark-State-Mediated Low-Energy Electron Attachment to Molecular Oxygen: Symmetry Adapted Decomposition of the DEA Resonance through Dyson-Orbitals' Incoherent Mixing.
- Orbital-Induced Peierls Transitions: How Orbitals Orchestrate Lattice Instability
- All-electron RT-TDDFT with Exact Exchange based on Numeric Atom-centered Orbitals for Condensed Matter
BibTeX
@misc{durst2026electron,
title = {{Electron lattice potentials for ultracold atoms using circular Rydberg orbitals}},
author = {Aileen A. T. Durst and Einius Pultinevicius and Homar Rivera-Rodríguez and Tilman Pfau and Matthew T. Eiles and Florian Meinert},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.31267},
eprint = {2609.31267},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.31267},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Electron lattice potentials for ultracold atoms using circular Rydberg orbitals
AU - Aileen A. T. Durst
AU - Einius Pultinevicius
AU - Homar Rivera-Rodríguez
AU - Tilman Pfau
AU - Matthew T. Eiles
AU - Florian Meinert
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/25
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.31267
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.31267
AB - Recent advances in experiments using individually trapped atoms have enabled precise control over circular Rydberg electrons with exceptionally long lifetimes. We show that these giant and stable electron orbits can form toroidal lattice potentials for ultracold atoms with a period set by the electron's de Broglie wavelength. Unlike conventional static optical lattices, this electron lattice is formed via the electron-atom interaction, which mixes Rydberg circular states with opposite azimuthal phase winding into a standing electronic matter wave. The lattice phase is thereby intrinsically coupled to the atom position. For a pair of atoms, this results in ballistic tunneling motion in the two-atom spatial correlations along the ring, while the single particle dynamics is essentially free rotation. We simulate the dynamics for an experimentally realistic setting that exploits optical tweezers for individual atom control. Our results open a route toward incorporating long range atom-atom interactions mediated by a single electron and, ultimately, realizing small Bose and Fermi gases confined in these microscopic electronic atom traps.
ER -