Related papers: Atomic Rydberg Reservoirs for Polar Molecules
Rydberg atoms represent a platform underpinning many recent developments in quantum computation, simulation, sensing, and metrology. They further facilitate optical nonlinearity at the single-photon level when coupled to photons propagating…
We propose a cooling scheme to prepare stationary entanglement of neutral atoms in the Rydberg blockade regime by combination of periodically collective laser pumping and dissipation. In each cycle, the controlled unitary dynamics process…
Recent experimental breakthroughs in trapping, cooling and controlling ultracold gases of polar molecules, magnetic and Rydberg atoms have paved the way toward the investigation of highly tunable quantum systems, where anisotropic,…
Collisions between cold molecules are essential for studying fundamental aspects of quantum chemistry, and may enable formation of quantum degenerate molecular matter by evaporative cooling. However, collisions between trapped, naturally…
We investigate the electric field shielding of ultracold collisions of dipolar rotors, initially in their first rotational excited state, using an adimensional approach. We establish a map of good and bad candidates for efficient…
We study the impact of Rydberg molecule formation on the storage and retrieval of Rydberg polaritons in an ultracold atomic medium. We observe coherent revivals appearing in the retrieval efficiency of stored photons that originate from…
We have studied the behavior of cold Rydberg atoms embedded in an ultracold plasma. We demonstrate that even deeply bound Rydberg atoms are completely ionized in such an environment, due to electron collisions. Using a fast pulse extraction…
We report the sudden and spontaneous evolution of an initially correlated gas of repulsively interacting Rydberg atoms to an ultracold plasma. Under continuous laser coupling we create a Rydberg ensemble in the strong blockade regime, which…
We study the shift of rotational levels of a diatomic polar molecule due to its van der Waals (vdW) interaction with a gently curved dielectric surface at temperature $T$, and submicron separations. The molecule is assumed to be in its…
Resonant electric dipole-dipole interactions between cold Rydberg atoms were observed using microwave spectroscopy. Laser-cooled Rb atoms in a magneto-optical trap were optically excited to 45d Rydberg states using a pulsed laser. A…
We present a theoretical formalism to treat the ultracold dynamics of a pair of colliding polar molecules submitted to two laser fields. We express the dressed Hamiltonian including the dipole-dipole interaction of the colliding molecular…
Laser cooling and trapping of atomic matter waves in optical potentials has enabled rapid progress in quantum science, particularly when combined with Rydberg excitation of the atoms to induce long-range interactions. Here, we propose the…
We predict that ultralong-range Rydberg bi-molecules form in collisions between polar molecules in cold and ultracold settings. The collision of $\Lambda$-doublet nitric oxide (NO) with long-lived Rydberg NO($nf$, $ng$) molecules forms…
We study collisional rethermalization in ultracold dipolar thermal gases, made intricate by their anisotropic differential cross sections. Theoretical methods are provided to derive the number of collisions per rethermalization, which for…
Within the frame of macroscopic quantum electrodynamics in causal media, the van der Waals interaction between an atomic system and an arbitrary arrangement of dispersing and absorbing dielectric bodies including metals is studied. It is…
We study the repulsive van der Waals interaction of cold rubidium $70S_{1/2}$ Rydberg atoms by analysis of time-delayed pair correlation functions. After excitation, Rydberg atoms are allowed to accelerate under the influence of the van der…
We present a multichannel scattering calculation of elastic and inelastic cold collisions between two low-field seeking, metastable ^{88}Sr [(5s5p) ^3P_2] atoms in the presence of an external magnetic field. The scattering physics is…
We review experimental and theoretical tools to excite, study and understand strongly interacting Rydberg gases. The focus lies on the excitation of dense ultracold atomic samples close to, or within quantum degeneracy, to high lying…
Collisions of polar $^{1}\Sigma$ state molecules at ultralow energies are considered, within a model that accounts for long-range dipole-dipole interactions, plus rotation of the molecules. We predict a substantial suppression of…
This thesis is divided into two parts, each of which supports constructing and using a lithium magneto-optical trap for cold collision studies: Part I: One outgoing channel of interest from cold collisions is the production of ion pairs. We…