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Few-Body Bound States of Dipole-Dipole Interacting Rydberg Atoms

We show that the resonant dipole-dipole interaction can give rise to bound states between two and three Rydberg atoms with non-overlapping electron clouds. The dimer and trimer states arise from avoided level crossings between states converging to different fine structure manifolds in the limit of separated atoms. We analyze the angular dependence of the potential wells, characterize the quantum dynamics in these potentials and discuss methods for their production and detection. Typical distances between the atoms are of the order of several micrometers which can be resolved in state-of-the-art experiments. The potential depths and typical oscillation frequencies are about one order of magnitude larger as compared to the dimer and trimer states investigated in [PRA $\textbf{86}$ 031401(R) (2012)] and [PRL $\textbf{111}$ 233003 (2014)], respectively. We find that the dimer and trimer molecules can be aligned with respect to the axis of a weak electric field.