Observation of intrastate and interstate facilitation between Rydberg S, P and D levels
Abstract
We report experimental results on Rydberg facilitation, whereby Rydberg levels can be excited off-resonantly in the presence of a nearby Rydberg atom because of Rydberg-Rydberg interactions, for high-lying , and levels in rubidium. Facilitation is detected both through an enhancement of the number of excited atoms for off-resonant excitation (either blue or red detuning) and a positive Mandel parameter indicating correlated excitation events (super-Poissonian counting statistics). We also calculate the pair-state potentials for the Rydberg states involved and find that our experimental results agree with the expected facilitation conditions for repulsive potentials (blue detuning) and attractive potentials (red detuning), with and states exhibiting facilitation on both sides of the resonance. Finally, we investigate inter-state facilitation between two different Rydberg levels (70 and 70 ).
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.17404,
title = {Observation of intrastate and interstate facilitation between Rydberg S, P and D levels},
author = {Bleuenn Bégoc and Sukhjit P. Singh and Giovanni Cichelli and Roberto Franco and Oliver Morsch},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.17404},
year = {2026}
}