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Quantal and classical radiative cascade in Rydberg plasmas

2003; American Physical Society; Volume: 68; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1103/physreva.68.030502

1538-4446

M. R. Flannery, D. Vrinceanu,

Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates

Atoms in high-$(n,\mathcal{l})$ states formed in cold Rydberg plasmas decay to the ground state in a succession of radiative transitions populating intermediate excited states. A classical treatment presents radiative cascade in a physically transparent way and reveals the ``trajectory'' in $n\mathcal{l}$ space obeyed by the cascade, scaling rules, and other aspects hidden within the quantal approach. Quantal-classical correspondence in radiative decay is directly demonstrated. Classical transition probabilities are also presented and are in excellent agreement with quantal transition probabilities, even for moderate quantum numbers.