Highly excited atoms

The major accomplishment under this contract was the innovation of techniques for the production and detection of highly excited atoms (Rydberg atoms), and a series of studies on the properties of Rydberg atoms in strong electric fields. Partly as a result of this work, the study of Rydberg systems has developed into an important new subfield of atomic physics during the past few years; already there have been two international meetings and several sessions at national meetings devoted to the subject. Much of the experimental work uses the combination of field ionization and atomic beams techniques developed under this contract.