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Anisotropic and Nonadditive Interactions of a Rydberg Impurity in a Quantum Bath

Aileen A. T. Durst1,2,*, Seth T. Rittenhouse3,2,4, H. R. Sadeghpour2, and Matthew T. Eiles1,5

  • *Contact author: dursta@pks.mpg.de
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 073401 – Published 13 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/38vj-6fqc

Abstract

We present a framework for treating mesoscopic anisotropic and nonadditive impurity–bath interactions, ubiquitous in realistic quantum impurity problems, which are often neglected in conventional approaches relying on additive, spherically symmetric pseudopotentials. To illustrate this general approach, we focus on the specific impurity problem of a Rydberg atom immersed in a Bose-Einstein condensate, where the internal-state degeneracy of the Rydberg impurity gives rise to configuration-dependent nonadditive potentials. With increasing interaction strength, anisotropy-induced partial-wave mixing generates distinct polaron and molaron resonances, allowing for radially and angularly excited bound states to become accessible. This approach captures the anisotropy and nonadditivity characteristic of a Rydberg impurity immersed in a quantum bath, and is broadly applicable to a host of quantum impurity problems beyond the Fröhlich paradigm.

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Outline

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 073401– Published 13 August, 2026
  • Received 26 November 2025
  • Revised 28 April 2026
  • Accepted 10 June 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by the Max Planck Society.

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