Related papers: Radiation trapping in a dense cold Rydberg gas
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…
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…
Tailored quantum states of light can be created via a transfer of collective quantum states of matter to light modes. Such collective quantum states emerge in interacting many-body systems if thermal fluctuations are overcome by sufficient…
Blockade effects on the single quantum level are at the heart of quantum devices like single-electron transistors. The blockade mechanisms are based on strong interactions like the Coulomb interaction in case of single electrons. Neutral…
Applicability of Rydberg atoms to quantum computers is examined from experimental point of view. In many theoretical proposals appeared recently, excitation of atoms into highly excited Rydberg states was considered as a way to achieve…
We observe and measure dispersive optical non-linearities in an ensemble of cold Rydberg atoms placed inside an optical cavity. The experimental results are in agreement with a simple model where the optical non-linearities are due to the…
Interfacing cold atoms with integrated nanophotonic devices could offer new paradigms for engineering atom-light interactions and provide a potentially scalable route for quantum sensing, metrology, and quantum information processing.…
We experimentally and numerically study the temporal dynamics of light scattered by large clouds of cold atoms after the exciting laser is switched off in the low intensity (linear optics) regime. Radiation trapping due to multiple…
In the last twenty years, Rydberg atoms have become a versatile and much studied system for implementing quantum many-body systems in the framework of quantum computation and quantum simulation. However, even in the absence of coherent…
We propose a new formulation for atomic side mode dynamics from super-radiant light scattering of trapped atoms. A detailed analysis of the recently observed super-radiant light scattering from trapped bose gases [S. Inouye {\it et al.},…
We describe a new mechanism of decoherence in excited atoms as a result of thermal particles scattering by the atomic nucleus. It is based on the idea that a single scattering will produce a sudden displacement of the nucleus, which will be…
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…
We predict a resonant enhancement of the nonlinear optical response of an interacting Rydberg gas under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency. The enhancement originates from a two-photon process which resonantly couples…
Atom-atom interactions within a small volume were investigated through the excitation of ultracold Rb atoms. The application of microwaves enhances these interactions, causing the suppression of Rydberg state excitation. The suppression of…
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.…
We investigate the dynamics of Rydberg electrons excited from the ground state of ultracold atoms trapped in an optical lattice. We first consider a lattice comprising an array of double-well potentials, where each double well is occupied…
We demonstrate three-dimensional trapping of individual Rydberg atoms in holographic optical bottle beam traps. Starting with cold, ground-state $^{87}$Rb atoms held in standard optical tweezers, we excite them to $nS_{1/2}$, $nP_{1/2}$, or…
While dissipative Rydberg gases exhibit unique possibilities to tune dissipation and interaction properties, very little is known about the quantum many-body physics of such long-range interacting open quantum systems. We theoretically…
We study the dissipative propagation of quantized light in interacting Rydberg media under the conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). Rydberg blockade physics in optically dense atomic media leads to strong…
We study the long-range interaction of a single ion with a highly excited ultracold Rydberg atom and report on the direct observation of ion-induced Rydberg excitation blockade mediated over tens of micrometer distances. Our hybrid ion-atom…