Related papers: State-selective all-optical detection of Rydberg a…
We present a comprehensive study of the diverse properties of heteronuclear Rydberg molecules, placing a special emphasis on those composed of the light alkali atoms, Li, Na, and K. Electron-atom scattering phase shifts, which determine the…
We experimentally demonstrate an original method to measure very accurately the density of a frozen Rydberg gas. It is based on the use of adiabatic transitions induced by the long-range dipole-dipole interaction in pairs of nearest…
We report the observation of spin-singlet ultra-long range Rydberg butterfly molecules consisting of a ground-state atom bound to a Rydberg atom by $P$-wave scattering of $^{87}$Rb Rydberg electrons from $^{87}$Rb(5s) atoms. A three-photon…
We present measurements on pulsed four-wave mixing involving a Rydberg state in an atomic vapor cell. The excitation to the Rydberg state is conducted by a pulsed two-photon excitation on the nanosecond timescale that is combined with a…
We report on a versatile, highly controllable hybrid cold Rydberg atom fiber interface, based on laser cooled atoms transported into a hollow core Kagom\'{e} crystal fiber. Our experiments are the first to demonstrate the feasibility of…
An ensemble of Rubidum atoms can be excited with lasers such that it evolves into an entangled state with just one collective excitation within the Rydberg blockade radius. The decay of this state leads to the emission of a single,…
The efficiency of a Bell-state measurement on photon pairs is bound to 50\,\% due to the number of Bell states that can be distinguished using linear optics. Here we present the implementation of a protocol that allows us to distinguish all…
Rydberg atoms, with their giant electric dipole moments and tunable energy-level transitions, offer exceptional potential for microwave (MW) electric field sensing, combining high sensitivity and broad frequency coverage. However,…
Motivated by recent progress in the experimental manipulation of cold atoms in optical lattices, we study three different protocols for non-adiabatic quantum state preparation and state transport in chains of Rydberg atoms. The protocols we…
The strong interaction between Rydberg atoms can be used to control the strength and character of the interatomic interaction in ultracold gases by weakly dressing the atoms with a Rydberg state. Elaborate theoretical proposals for the…
Ultracold trapped atomic ions excited into highly energetic Rydberg states constitute a promising platform for scalable quantum information processing. Elementary building blocks for such tasks are high-fidelity and sufficiently fast…
Rydberg-mediated quantum optics is a useful route toward deterministic quantum information processing based on single photons and quantum networks, but is bottlenecked by the fast motional dephasing of Rydberg atoms. Here, we propose and…
Utilizing single-photon photoassociation, we have achieved ultracold rubidium molecules with a high number density that provides a new efficient approach toward molecular quantum degeneracy. A new detection mechanism for ultracold molecule…
Ultracold atomic gases have been used extensively in recent years to realize textbook examples of condensed matter phenomena. Recently, phase transitions to ordered structures have been predicted for gases of highly excited, 'frozen'…
We present a detailed analysis of our recent observation of synchronous Rabi oscillations between the electronic ground state and Rydberg states in a mesoscopic ensemble containing roughly 100 ultracold atoms [M. Reetz-Lamour \textit{et…
We derive a quantum master equation for an atom coupled to a heat bath represented by a charged particle many-body environment. In Born-Markov approximation, the influence of the plasma environment on the reduced system is described by the…
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 introduce well-separated $^{87}$Rb$^+$ ions into an atomic ensemble by microwave ionization of Rydberg excitations and realize single-shot imaging of the individual ions with an exposure time of 1 $\mu$s. This imaging sensitivity is…
Alkaline earth Rydberg atoms are very promising tools for quantum technologies. Their highly excited outer electron provides them with the remarkable properties of Rydberg atoms and, notably, with a huge coupling to external fields or to…
Assemblies of highly excited Rydberg atoms in an ultracold gas can be set into motion by a combination of van-der-Waals and resonant dipole-dipole interactions. Thereby, the collective electronic Rydberg state might change due to…