Rubidium Rydberg linear macrotrimers

We investigate the interaction between three rubidium atoms in highly excited (58p) Rydberg states lying along a common axis and calculate the potential energy surfaces between the three atoms. We find that three-body long-range potential wells exist in some of these surfaces, indicating the existence of very extended bound states that we label macrotrimers. We calculate the lowest vibrational eigenmodes and the resulting energy levels and show that the corresponding vibrational periods are rapid enough to be detected spectroscopically. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.87.032512