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The rapidly developing field of optomechanics aims at the combined control of optical and mechanical (solid-state or atomic) modes. In particular, laser cooled atoms have been used to exploit optomechanical coupling for self-organization in…

Spontaneous symmetry breaking in nonlinear systems provides a unified method to understand vastly different phenomena, ranging from Higgs mechanism [1] and superconductivity [2] to ecological stability [3] and genome generation [4].…

The spontaneous formation of patterns in dynamical systems is a rich phenomenon that transcends scientific boundaries. Here, we report our observation of coupled optical-atomic pattern formation, which results in the creation of…

We investigate dispersive optical nonlinearities that arise from Rydberg excitation blockade in cold Rydberg gases. We consider a two-photon transition scheme and study the non-linear response to a weak optical probe in presence of a strong…

Precise control and study of molecules is challenging due to the variety of internal degrees of freedom and local coordinates that are typically not controlled in an experiment. Employing quantum gas microscopy to position and resolve the…

Bound states of solitons, alias soliton molecules (SMs), are well known in one-dimensional (1D) systems, while making stable bound states of multidimensional solitons is a challenging problem because of the underlying instabilities. Here we…

By mapping the strong interaction between Rydberg excitations in ultra-cold atomic ensembles onto single photons via electromagnetically induced transparency, it is now possible to realize a nonlinear optical medium which exhibits a strong…

We investigate the optical Kerr nonlinearities of an ensemble of cold Rydberg atoms under the condition of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). By using an approach beyond mean-field theory, we show that the system possesses not…

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…

Experimental control over the strength and angular dependence of interactions between atoms is a key capability for advancing quantum technologies. Here, we use microwave dressing to manipulate and enhance Rydberg-Rydberg interactions in an…

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…

The Rydberg dipole-blockade has emerged as the standard mechanism to induce entanglement between neutral atom qubits. In these protocols, laser fields that couple qubit states to Rydberg states are modulated to implement entangling gates.…

Dominating finite-range interactions in many-body systems can lead to intriguing self-ordered phases of matter. Well known examples are crystalline solids or Coulomb crystals in ion traps. In those systems, crystallization proceeds via a…

We present combined measurements of the spatially-resolved optical spectrum and the total excited-atom number in an ultracold gas of three-level atoms under electromagnetically induced transparency conditions involving high-lying Rydberg…

The interactions between Rydberg atoms and microwave fields provide a valuable framework for studying the complex dynamics out of equilibrium, exotic phases, and critical phenomena in many-body physics. This unique interplay allows us to…

We demonstrate the ability to excite atoms at well-defined, programmable locations in a magneto-optical trap, either to the continuum (ionisation), or to a Rydberg state. To this end, excitation laser light is shaped into arbitrary…

Production of entangled photon pairs is important in secure communication systems, quantum computing, and fundamental physics experiments. Achieving efficient generation of such photon pairs with low-loss parametric oscillators is a key…

Ultracold atoms are an ideal platform to study strongly correlated phases of matter in and out of equilibrium. Much of the experimental progress in this field crucially relies on the control of the contact interaction between two atoms.…

Coherent scattering of light from ultracold atoms involves an exchange of energy and momentum introducing a wealth of non-linear dynamical phenomena. As a prominent example particles can spontaneously form stationary periodic configurations…

In the regime of Rydberg electromagnetically induced transparency, we study the correlated behaviors between the transmission spectra of a pair of probe fields passing through respective parallel one-dimensional cold Rydberg ensembles. Due…