Related papers: Electromagnetically induced transparency with Rydb…
Dense atom ensembles with Rydberg excitations display intriguing collective effects mediated by their strong, long-range dipole-dipole interactions. These collective effects, often modeled using Rydberg superatoms, have gained significant…
The dipole blockade between Rydberg atoms has been proposed as a basic tool in quantum information processing with neutral atoms. Here we demonstrate experimentally the Rydberg blockade of two individual atoms separated by 4 $\mu$m.…
Previously, we had proposed the technique of light shift imbalance induced blockade which leads to a condition where a collection of non-interacting atoms under laser excitation remains combined to a superposition of the ground and the…
Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) and absorption (EIA) are quantum coherence phenomena which result due to interference of excitation pathways. Since the first realization of EIT in 1991 and EIA in 1998, mechanisms behind these…
Light propagation through an ensemble of ultra-cold Rydberg atoms in electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) configuration is studied. In strongly interacting Rydberg EIT media, non-linear optical effects lead to a non-trivial…
We demonstrate theoretically that electromagnetically induced transparency can be achieved in metamaterials, in which electromagnetic radiation is interacting resonantly with mesoscopic oscillators rather than with atoms. We describe novel…
We study theoretically laser excitation of Rydberg triplet states of strontium atoms in the presence of weak microwave (MW) fields. Starting from the ground state $5s^2\,^1S_0$, the Rydberg excitation is realized through the metastable,…
Advances in the distribution of quantum information will likely require entanglement shared across a hybrid quantum network. Many entanglement protocols require the generation of indistinguishable photons between the various nodes of the…
Quantum reflection is a pure wave phenomena that predicts reflection of a particle at a changing potential for cases where complete transmission occurs classically. For a chemical bond, we find that this effect can lead to non-classical…
We propose and analyze a scheme for realizing the quantum reflection of single photons in a cold Rydberg atomic gas via electromagnetically induced transparency, by which a deep and tunable attractive potential well can be prepared by using…
The implementation of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in a cold Rydberg gas provides an attractive route towards strong photon--photon interactions and fully deterministic all-optical quantum information processing. In this…
Over the past few years we have built an apparatus to demonstrate the entanglement of neutral Rb atoms at optically resolvable distances using the strong interactions between Rydberg atoms. Here we review the basic physics involved in this…
We present an analytical theory for the nonlinear optical response of a strongly interacting Rydberg gas under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency. Simple formulae for the third order optical susceptibility are derived…
We study the emergence of many-body correlations in the stationary state of continuously-driven, strongly-interacting dissipative system. Specifically, we examine resonant optical excitations of Rydberg states of atoms interacting via…
We demonstrate electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in a sample of rubidium atoms, trapped in an optical dipole trap. Mixing a small amount of $\sigma^-$-polarized light to the weak $\sigma^+$-polarized probe pulses, we are able…
Strong interactions can amplify quantum effects such that they become important on macroscopic scales. Controlling these coherently on a single particle level is essential for the tailored preparation of strongly correlated quantum systems…
Van der Waals interactions, as a result of the exchange of photons between particles, can be altered by modifying the environment through which these photons propagate. As a consequence, phenomena such as the Rydberg blockade mechanism…
We report the creation of an interacting cold Rydberg gas of strontium atoms. We show that the excitation spectrum of the inner valence electron is sensitive to the interactions in the Rydberg gas, even though they are mediated by the outer…
We present experimental results on the influence of magnetic fields and laser polarization on electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) using Rydberg levels of $^{87}$Rb atoms. The measurements are performed in a room temperature vapor…
We demonstrate spatially resolved, coherent excitation of Rydberg atoms on an atom chip. Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is used to investigate the properties of the Rydberg atoms near the gold coated chip surface. We measure…