Related papers: Storage enhanced nonlinearities in a cold atomic R…
We investigate the dynamical formation of crystalline states with systems of polar molecules or Rydberg atoms loaded into a deep optical lattice. External fields in these systems can be used to couple the atoms or molecules between two…
The dipole blockade effect at laser excitation of mesoscopic ensembles of Rydberg atoms lies in the fact that the excitation of one atom to a Rydberg state blocks the excitation of other atoms due to the shift in the collective energy…
We demonstrate spatially resolved, coherent excitation of Rydberg atoms on an atom chip. Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is used to investigate the properties of the Rydberg atoms near the gold coated chip surface. We measure…
We report the creation of an interacting cold Rydberg gas of strontium atoms. We show that the excitation spectrum of the inner valence electron is sensitive to the interactions in the Rydberg gas, even though they are mediated by the outer…
The long-range interaction between Rydberg-excited atoms endows a medium with large optical nonlinearity. Here, we demonstrate an optical switch to operate on a single photon from an entangled photon pair under a Rydberg electromagnetically…
We theoretically investigate the nonlinear optical transmission through a cuprous oxide crystal for wavelengths that cover the series of highly excited excitons, observed in recent experiments. Since such Rydberg excitons have strong van…
Quantum information processing with neutral atoms relies on Rydberg excitation for entanglement generation. While the use of heavy divalent or open-shell elements, such as strontium or ytterbium, has benefits due to their optically active…
We demonstrate Rydberg blockade due to the charge-dipole interaction between a single Rb atom and a single RbCs molecule confined in optical tweezers. The molecule is formed by magnetoassociation of a Rb+Cs atom pair and subsequently…
We present the experimental observation of the antiblockade in an ultracold Rydberg gas recently proposed by Ates et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 023002 (2007)]. Our approach allows the control of the pair distribution in the gas and is based…
We consider the interplay between excitonic and atomic motion in a regular, flexible chain of Rydberg atoms, extending our recent results on entanglement transport in Rydberg chains [W\"uster et al., Phys.Rev.Lett 105 053004 (2010)]. In…
We experimentally realize Rydberg excitations in Bose-Einstein condensates of rubidium atoms loaded into quasi one-dimensional traps and in optical lattices. Our results for condensates expanded to different sizes in the one-dimensional…
We study the possibility to use interaction between a polar molecule in the ground electronic and vibrational state and a Rydberg atom to construct two-qubit gates between molecular qubits and to coherently control molecular states. A polar…
We report on the delay of optical pulses using electromagnetically induced transparency in an ensemble of cold atoms with an optical depth exceeding 500. To identify the regimes in which four-wave mixing impacts on EIT behaviour, we conduct…
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…
Mapping the strong interaction between Rydberg atoms onto single photons via electromagnetically induced transparency enables manipulation of light on the single photon level and novel few-photon devices such as all-optical switches and…
Light propagation and storing in a medium of atoms in the tripod configuration driven by two control pulses are investigated theoretically in terms of two polaritons and numerically. It is shown that a magnetic field switched on at the…
We demonstrate a method for probing interaction effects in a thermal beam of strontium atoms using simultaneous measurements of Rydberg EIT and spontaneously created ions or electrons. We present a Doppler-averaged optical Bloch equation…
The strong non-linear optical response of atomic systems in electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) states is considered as a means to detect the presence of small perturbations to steady states. For the 3-level system, expressions…
Trapped Rydberg atoms are highly promising candidates for quantum science experiments. While several approaches have been put forward to exert (trapping) forces on isolated Rydberg atoms, a widely applicable lossless technique is lacking.…
We characterize the two-photon excitation of an ultracold gas of Rubidium atoms to Rydberg states analysing the induced atomic losses from an optical dipole trap. Extending the duration of the Rydberg excitation to several ms, the ground…