Related papers: Threading an atom with light
We show that, for a near-resonant propagating beam, a large cloud of cold 87Rb atoms acts as a saturable Kerr medium and produces self-trapping of light. By side fluorescence imaging we monitor the transverse size of the beam and, depending…
We have conceived, built, and operated a cryogenic Penning trap with an electrically conducting yet optically transparent solid electrode. The trap, dedicated to spectroscopy and imaging of confined particles under large solid angles is of…
Conditions to achieve an unusually strong Rydberg spin-exchange interaction are investigated and proposed as a means to generate pairwise entanglement and realize a SWAP-like quantum gate for neutral atoms. Ground-state entanglement is…
The problem of creating well-collimated beams of atoms escaping from a trap is studied. This problem is of high importance for the realization of atom lasers. Nonadiabatic dynamics of neutral atoms in nonuniform magnetic fields, typical of…
A new trap for atoms and small particles based on the interaction between an atom and the field of counter-propagating light pulses that are partially superposed in time has been proposed. A substantial difference from the known analogs…
For several decades, ions have been trapped by radio frequency (RF) and neutral particles by optical fields. We implement the experimental proof-of-principle for trapping an ion in an optical dipole trap. While loading, initialization and…
We show that the recently observed class of long-range ion-Rydberg molecules can be divided into two families of states, which are characterised by their unique electronic structures resulting from the ion-induced admixture of quantum…
Rydberg dressing traditionally refers to a technique where interactions between cold atoms are imprinted through the far off-resonant continuous-wave excitation of high-lying Rydberg states. Dipolar interactions between these electronic…
We investigate the phenomenon of optical bistability in a driven ensemble of Rydberg atoms. By performing two experiments with thermal vapors of rubidium and cesium, we are able to shed light onto the underlying interaction mechanisms…
We examine topological phases and symmetry-protected electronic edge states in the context of a Rydberg composite: a Rydberg atom interfaced with a structured arrangement of ground-state atoms. The electronic Hamiltonian of such a composite…
We propose a new class of nanoscale electro-optical traps for neutral atoms. A prototype is the toroidal trap created by a suspended, charged carbon nanotube decorated with a silver nanosphere dimer. An illuminating laser field, blue…
We report efficient microwave-optical two photon excitation of Rb Rydberg atoms in a magneto optical trap. This approach allows the excitation of normally inaccessible states and provides a path toward excitation of high angular momentum…
The capture of a moving atom by a non-dissipative trap, such as an optical dipole trap, requires the removal of the excessive kinetic energy of the atom. In this article we develop a mechanism to harvest ultra cold atoms from a guided atom…
We propose an approach to detect individual Rydberg molecules with each molecule consisting of two atoms in different Rydberg states. The scheme exploits the movement of atoms in the presence of an external force that exerts only on atoms…
When a single two-level atom interacts with a pair of Laguerre-Gaussian beams with opposite helicity, this leads to an efficient exchange of angular momentum between the light field and the atom. When the radial motion is trapped by an…
We theoretically investigate the quantum properties of nS, nP, and nD Rydberg atoms in a magnetic Ioffe-Pritchard trap. In particular, it is demonstrated that the two-body character of Rydberg atoms significantly alters the trapping…
We propose and analyze a scheme to interface individual neutral atoms with nanoscale solid-state systems. The interface is enabled by optically trapping the atom via the strong near-field generated by a sharp metallic nanotip. We show that…
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.…
We have measured the AC-Stark shift of the $14D_{5/2}$ Rydberg state of rubidium 87 in an optical dipole trap formed by a focussed CO$_2$-laser. We find good quantitative agreement with the model of a free electron experiencing a…
We study the occurrence of Rydberg atom-ion molecules (RAIMs) in a hybrid atom-ion system with an ion crystal trapped in a Paul trap coupled to Rydberg atoms on its either ends. To assess the feasibility of such a system, we perform a…