Laser excitation of angular Rydberg wavepackets in a static magnetic field

The presence of an external static magnetic field is shown to influence the excitation dynamics of angular Rydberg wavepackets significantly. With linearly polarized light and a magnetic field applied in an orthogonal direction, we obtain a large fraction of the final state population with magnetic quantum number \m \ > 0. This induces a stronger localization of the electron on either side of the nucleus compared with the B = 0 case. Also the B-field leads to a rotation of the electronic charge density which can be understood classically by considering the Lorentz equation.