Related papers: Anisotropic blockade using pendular Rydberg butter…
In a laser-driven Rydberg gas the strong interaction between atoms excited to Rydberg states results in the formation of collective excitations. Atoms within a so-called blockade volume share a single Rydberg excitation, which is…
We present a method to control the shape and character of the interaction potential between cold atomic gases by weakly dressing the atomic ground state with a Rydberg level. For increasing particle densities, a crossover takes place from a…
When atomic gases are laser driven to Rydberg states in an off resonant way, a single Rydberg atom may enhance the excitation rate of surrounding atoms. This leads to a facilitated excitation referred to as Rydberg anti-blockade. In the…
We report on our recent progress on the manipulation of single rubidium atoms trapped in optical tweezers and the generation of entanglement between two atoms, each individually trapped in neighboring tweezers. To create an entangled state…
Interaction blockade occurs when strong interactions in a confined few-body system prevent a particle from occupying an otherwise accessible quantum state. Blockade phenomena reveal the underlying granular nature of quantum systems and…
The spectral structure underlying excitonic energy transfer in ultra-cold Rydberg gases is studied numerically, in the framework of random matrix theory, and via self-consistent diagrammatic techniques. Rydberg gases are made up of randomly…
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…
Quantum entanglement is crucial for simulating and understanding exotic physics of strongly correlated many-body systems, such as high--temperature superconductors, or fractional quantum Hall states. The entanglement of non-identical…
We study the quantum properties of Rydberg atoms in a magnetic Ioffe-Pritchard trap which is superimposed by a homogeneous electric field. Trapped Rydberg atoms can be created in long-lived electronic states exhibiting a permanent electric…
Interaction between Rydberg atoms can significantly modify Rydberg excitation dynamics. Under a resonant driving field the Rydberg-Rydberg interaction in high-lying states can induce shifts in the atomic resonance such that a secondary…
We investigate the properties of two interacting ultracold polar molecules described as distinguishable quantum rigid rotors, trapped in a one-dimensional harmonic potential. The molecules interact via a multichannel two-body contact…
We demonstrate that through localised Rydberg excitation in a three-dimensional cold atom cloud atomic motion can be rendered directed and nearly confined to a plane, without spatial constraints for the motion of individual atoms. This…
The ability to control and tune interactions in ultracold atomic gases has paved the way towards the realization of new phases of matter. Whereas experiments have so far achieved a high degree of control over short-ranged interactions, the…
We propose and analyze a new scheme to produce ultracold neutral plasmas deep in the strongly coupled regime. The method exploits the interaction blockade between cold atoms excited to high-lying Rydberg states and therefore does not…
A ground state atom immersed in the wave function of the valence electron of a Rydberg atom can generate a long-range Rydberg molecule (LRRM). In this work, using the multipole expansion of the electrostatic interaction in prolate…
Ultralong-range Rydberg molecules, composed of an excited Rydberg atom and a ground-state atom, are characterized by large bond lengths, dipole moments, sensitivity to external fields, and an unusual binding mechanism based on low-energy…
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 study electromagnetically induced transparency of a ladder type configuration in ultracold atomic gases, where the upper level is an electronically highly excited Rydberg state. The strong two-body interaction in the Rydberg state leads…
This Ph.D. tutorial discusses ultra-long-range Rydberg molecules, the exotic bound states of a Rydberg atom and one or more ground state atoms immersed in the Rydberg electron's wave function. This novel chemical bond is distinct from an…
We study a novel regime of the Rydberg excitation blockade using highly Stark-shifted, yet long-living, states of Rb atoms subject to electric fields above the classical ionization limit. Such states allow tuning the dipole-dipole…