Neutral-atom quantum simulation is susceptible to entanglement between the atom's internal electronic state and its center-of-mass position. In many alkali Rydberg platforms, the ‘‘spin-motion coupling’’ is exacerbated by the free expansion required to avoid ponderomotive antitrapping from optical fields. A recent proposal [Phys. Rev. A 111, 053120 (2025)] claims sufficiently excited Rydberg states could be trapped in a monochromatic, far-detuned, circularly polarized optical field via a large vector polarizability. We disprove the proposal through analytic calculation and measurement of the vector polarizability of the $54S, 54P$, and $53D$ orbitals of Cesium. We analytically derive that the real scalar, vector, and tensor polarizabilities scale with optical angular frequency $\omega$ as ${\omega }^{-2}, {\omega }^{-3}$, and ${\omega }^{-4}$, not the proposed scaling of ${\omega }^{-2}, {\omega }^{-1}$, and ${\omega }^{-2}$. We refine the sum-over-states expression to be numerically stable for optical frequencies and predict negligible vector and tensor polarizabilities far detuned from resonances, in agreement with our measurements. However, we find that vector polarizability can enhance near-detuned attractive trapping [Phys. Rev. A 112, L041101 (2025)]. Furthermore, we evaluate the breakdown of the electric-dipole approximation and derive no effect stronger than ponderomotive repulsion. We conclude that an attractive, monochromatic, far-detuned optical trap for alkali Rydberg states is not possible, regardless of the beam geometry.

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• Atomic & molecular processes in external fields
• Atomic spectra
• Rydberg atoms & molecules
• Trapped atoms
• Polarizability
• Polarization
• Dipole approximation
• Perturbative methods