Related papers: Spatial correlations of Rydberg excitations in opt…
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…
We propose a new all-optical method to image individual atoms within dense atomic gases. The scheme exploits interaction induced shifts on highly polarizable excited states, which can be spatially resolved via an electromagnetically induced…
We study the behavior of a Bose-Einstein condensate in which atoms are weakly coupled to a highly excited Rydberg state. Since the latter have very strong van der Waals interactions, this coupling induces effective, nonlocal interactions…
We report on the experimental observation of non-trivial three-photon correlations imprinted onto initially uncorrelated photons through interaction with a single Rydberg superatom. Exploiting the Rydberg blockade mechanism, we turn a cold…
Rydberg-atom ensembles are switched from a weakly- into a strongly-interacting regime via adiabatic transformation of the atoms from an approximately non-polar into a highly dipolar quantum state. The resultant electric dipole-dipole forces…
We experimentally characterize the optical nonlinear response of a cold atomic medium placed inside an optical cavity, and excited to Rydberg states. The excitation to S and D Rydberg levels is carried out via a two-photon transition in an…
We examine interactions between atoms continuously and coherently driven between the ground state and a Rydberg state, producing "Rydberg-dressed atoms." Because of the large dipolar coupling between two Rydberg atoms, a small admixture of…
We propose a scheme that employs dissipation to deterministically generate entanglement in an ensemble of strongly interacting Rydberg atoms. With a combination of microwave driving between different Rydberg levels and a resonant laser…
We demonstrate the coherent excitation of a mesoscopic ensemble of about 100 ultracold atoms to Rydberg states by driving Rabi oscillations from the atomic ground state. We employ a dedicated beam shaping and optical pumping scheme to…
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…
In a recent work [Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 023004 (2007)] we have investigated the influence of attractive van der Waals interaction on the pair distribution and Penning ionization dynamics of ultracold Rydberg gases. Here we extend this…
We present a theory of electromagnetically induced transparency in a cold ensemble of strongly interacting Rydberg atoms. Long-range interactions between the atoms constrain the medium to behave as a collection of superatoms, each…
We investigate resonant dipole-dipole interactions between two "superatoms" of different angular momentum, consisting of two Rydberg-blockaded atom clouds where each of them carries initially a coherently shared single excitation. We…
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.…
Assemblies of Rydberg atoms subject to resonant dipole-dipole interactions form Frenkel excitons. We show that van-der-Waals shifts can significantly modify the exciton wave function, whenever atoms approach each other closely. As a result,…
We consider a system consisting of Rydberg dressed atoms interacting with BEC condensate of diatomic molecules. Using random phase approximation (RPA) we calculate the effective interactions between Rydberg atoms accounting for their Wan…
We investigate a possible mechanism for the autoionization of ultracold Rydberg gases, based on the resonant coupling of Rydberg pair states to the ionization continuum. Unlike an atomic collision where the wave functions begin to overlap,…
The observation of strongly interacting many-body phenomena in atomic gases typically requires ultracold samples. Here we show that the strong interaction potentials between Rydberg atoms enable the observation of many-body effects in an…
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…
Recent experiments have shown that (quasi-)crystalline phases of Rydberg-dressed quantum many-body systems in optical lattices (OL) are within reach. Rydberg systems naturally possess strong long-range interactions due to the large…