Related papers: Entropic enhancement of spatial correlations in a …
The ability to control and tune interactions in ultracold atomic gases has paved the way towards the realization of new phases of matter. Whereas experiments have so far achieved a high degree of control over short-ranged interactions, the…
We study the excitation dynamics of Rydberg atoms in a one-dimensional lattice with periodic boundary conditions where the atomic Rydberg states are resonantly excited from the electronic ground state. Our description of the corresponding…
The collective excitations in ensembles of dissipative, laser driven ultracold atoms exhibit crystal-like patterns, a many-body effect of the Rydberg blockade mechanism. These crystalline structure are revealed in experiment from a…
We describe the emergence of strong spatial correlations, akin to liquid-like behavior and crystallization effects, in low (one and two) dimensional gases of cold Rydberg atoms. The presence of an external electric field permanently…
We show that the dynamics of a laser driven Rydberg gas in the limit of strong dephasing is described by a master equation with manifest kinetic constraints. The equilibrium state of the system is uncorrelated but the constraints in the…
Cold atomic gases resonantly excited to Rydberg states can exhibit strong optical nonlinearity at the single photon level. We observe that in such samples radiation trapping leads to an additional mechanism for Rydberg excitation.…
We consider a one-dimensional lattice of atoms with laser excitation to a Rydberg state and spontaneous emission. The atoms are coupled due to the dipole-dipole interaction of the Rydberg states. This driven-dissipative system has a broad…
The excitation dynamics of a laser-driven Rydberg gas exhibits a cooperative effect due to the interatomic Rydberg-Rydberg interaction, but the large many-body system with inhomogeneous Rydberg coupling is hard to exactly solved or…
In the laser excitation of ultracold atoms to Rydberg states, we observe a dramatic suppression caused by van der Waals interactions. This behavior is interpreted as a local excitation blockade: Rydberg atoms strongly inhibit excitation of…
We demonstrate that through localised Rydberg excitation in a three-dimensional cold atom cloud atomic motion can be rendered directed and nearly confined to a plane, without spatial constraints for the motion of individual atoms. This…
In an ensemble of laser-driven atoms involving strongly interacting Rydberg states, the excitation probability is usually strongly suppressed. In contrast, here we identify a regime in which the steady-state Rydberg excited fraction is…
One of the most striking features of the strong interactions between Rydberg atoms is the dipole blockade effect, which allows only a single excitation to the Rydberg state within the volume of the blockade sphere. Here we present a method…
We investigate the collective excitation effect in a scheme where three identical Rydberg atoms are arranged in an equilateral triangular lattice. By using a static electric field polarizing the atomic dipoles, the dipole-dipole…
When Rydberg states are excited in a dense atomic gas the mean number of excited atoms reaches a stationary value after an initial transient period. We shed light on the origin of this steady state that emerges from a purely coherent…
Atoms excited into high-lying Rydberg states and under strong dipole-dipole interactions exhibit phenomena associated with highly correlated and complex systems. We perform first principles numerical simulations on the dynamics of such…
The laser-excitation of Rydberg atoms in ultracold gases is often described assuming that the atomic motion is frozen during the excitation time. We show that this frozen gas approximation can break down for atoms that are held in optical…
We show that Rydberg states in an ultra-cold gas can be excited with strongly preferred nearest-neighbor distance if densities are well below saturation. The scheme makes use of an echo sequence in which the first half of a laser pulse…
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 show that an array of ultracold Rydberg atoms embedded in a laser driven background gas can serve as an aggregate for simulating exciton dynamics and energy transport with a controlled environment. Spatial disorder and decoherence…
We describe a method for controlling many-body states in extended ensembles of Rydberg atoms, forming crystalline structures during laser excitation of a frozen atomic gas. Specifically, we predict the existence of an excitation number…