Mixed adiabatic and diabatic passages through avoided crossings in the Stark map of cesium Rydberg atoms are employed as beam splitters and recombiners in an atom-interferometric measurement of energy-level splittings. We subject cold cesium atoms to laser-excitation, electric-field, and detection sequences that constitute an (internal-state) atom interferometer. The adiabatic state transformation in the interferometer's beam splitters enables the spectroscopy of states that are, due to selection rules, inaccessible to direct laser-spectroscopic observation. For the read-out of the interferometer we utilize state-dependent collisions, which selectively remove atoms of one kind from the detected signal. We investigate the dependence of the interferometric signal on timing and field parameters, and find good agreement with quantum simulations of the interferometer. Fourier analysis of the interferometric signals yield coherence frequencies that agree with corresponding energy-level differences in calculated Stark maps.

• Received 5 April 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.92.033619