Quantal and classical radiative cascade in Rydberg plasmas

Atoms in high-(n,l) states formed in cold Rydberg plasmas decay to the ground state in a succession of radiative transitions populating intermediate excited states. A classical treatment presents radiative cascade in a physically transparent way and reveals the 'trajectory' in nl space obeyed by the cascade, scaling rules, and other aspects hidden within the quantal approach. Quantal-classical correspondence in radiative decay is directly demonstrated. Classical transition probabilities are also presented and are in excellent agreement with quantal transition probabilities, even for moderate quantum numbers