Fig. 13

Acceleration and deceleration of beams of Ar atoms in time-dependent electric fields. a Electrode configuration used in the acceleration/deceleration of Ar Rydberg atoms using time-dependent inhomogeneous electric fields. b Time dependence of the potentials applied to electrodes 3 and 4 in (a) for acceleration/deceleration. c Experimentally recorded time-of-flight distributions demonstrating the acceleration (left-hand red dataset), deceleration (right-hand blue dataset) of high-field-seeking (HFS) and low-field-seeking (LFS) n=16 Rydberg-Stark states, respectively. The central black dataset represents the time-of-flight distribution of the undecelerated Rydberg atom beam. From [114] with permission