Related papers: Patterned Rydberg excitation and ionisation with a…
Rydberg atoms are in the focus of intense research due to the peculiar properties which make them interesting candidates for quantum optics and quantum information applications. In this work we study the ionization of Rydberg atoms due to…
We present a method for measuring the polarizability of Rydberg ions confined in the harmonic potential of a Paul trap. For a highly excited electronic state, the coupling between the electronic wave function and the trapping field modifies…
We have performed two-photon excitation via the 6P3/2 state to n=50-80 S or D Rydberg state in Bose-Einstein condensates of rubidium atoms. The Rydberg excitation was performed in a quartz cell, where electric fields generated by plates…
We develop and study quantum and semi-classical models of Rydberg-atom spectroscopy in amplitude-modulated optical lattices. Both initial- and target-state Rydberg atoms are trapped in the lattice. Unlike in any other spectroscopic scheme,…
Rydberg excitons (analogues of Rydberg atoms in condensed matter systems) are highly excited bound electron-hole states with large Bohr radii. The interaction between them as well as exciton coupling to light may lead to strong optical…
We propose a novel dipole trapping scheme using spatial light modulators (SLM) for the manipulation of individual atoms. The scheme uses a high numerical aperture microscope to map the intensity distribution of a SLM onto a cloud of cold…
Reconfigurable photonic devices capable of routing the flow of light enable flexible integrated-optic circuits that are not hard-wired but can be externally controlled. Analogous to free-space spatial light modulators, we demonstrate…
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…
The nature of light-matter interaction is governed by the spatial-temporal structures of a light field and material wavefunctions. The emergence of the light beam with transverse phase vortex, or equivalently orbital angular momentum (OAM)…
We explore the ability of two-dimensional periodic atom arrays to produce light amplification and generate laser emission when gain is introduced through external optical pumping. Specifically, we predict that lasing can take place for…
We investigate the spectral properties of a finite laser-driven lattice of ultracold Rydberg atoms exploiting the dipole blockade effect in the frozen Rydberg gas regime. Uniform one-dimensional lattices as well as lattices with variable…
We implement high-efficiency coherent excitation to a Rydberg state using stimulated Raman adiabatic passage in a cold atom electron and ion source. We achieve an efficiency of 60% averaged over the laser excitation volume with a peak…
The dynamics of electrons in counter-propagating, circularly polarized laser beams are shown to exhibit attractors whose ability to trap particles depends on the ratio of the beam intensities and a single parameter describing radiation…
When ground state atoms are excited to a Rydberg state, van der Waals interactions among them can lead to a strong suppression of the excitation. Despite the strong interactions the evolution can still be reversed by a simple phase shift in…
We show that the excitation of long-range Rydberg molecules in a three-dimensional optical lattice can be used as a position- and time-sensitive probe of the site occupancy in the system. To this end, we detect the ions which are…
We propose to use adiabatic rapid passage with a chirped laser pulse in the strong dipole blockade regime to deterministically excite only one Rydberg atom from randomly loaded optical dipole traps or optical lattices. The chirped laser…
Recently, the spectral manipulation of single photons has been achieved through spatial-temporal modulation of the optical refractive index. Here, we generalize this mechanism to massive particles, i.e. realizing the acceleration or…
Collective scattering of spatially coherent radiation by separated point emitters induces inter-particle forces. For particles close to nano-photonic structures as, for example, nano-fibers, hollow core fibers or photonic waveguides, this…
We study atoms in optical lattices whose electronic ground state is off-resonantly coupled to a highly excited state with strong binary interactions. We present a time-dependent treatment of the resulting quantum dynamics, which -- contrary…
We extend the recently developed technique of opto-optical modulation (OOM) to probe state-resolved ac-Stark-induced phase variations of a coherently excited ensemble of helium atoms. In a joint experimental and theoretical study, we find…