Observation of Rydberg Blockade Induced by a Single Ion
Abstract
We study the long-range interaction of a single ion with a highly excited ultracold Rydberg atom and report on the direct observation of ion-induced Rydberg excitation blockade mediated over tens of micrometer distances. Our hybrid ion-atom system is directly produced from an ultracold atomic ensemble via near-threshold photo-ionization of a single Rydberg excitation, employing a two-photon scheme which is specifically suited for generating a very low-energy ion. The ion's motion is precisely controlled by small electric fields, which allows us to analyze the blockade mechanism for a range of principal quantum numbers. Finally, we explore the capability of the ion as a high-sensitivity single-atom-based electric field sensor. The observed ion - Rydberg-atom interaction is of current interest for entanglement generation or studies of ultracold chemistry in hybrid ion-atom systems.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1809.00993,
title = {Observation of Rydberg Blockade Induced by a Single Ion},
author = {Felix Engel and Thomas Dieterle and Thomas Schmid and Christian Tomschitz and Christian Veit and Nicolas Zuber and Robert Löw and Tilman Pfau and Florian Meinert},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.00993},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
7 pages, 7 figures