Related papers: The ZEKE-effect in cold Rydberg gases
Cold atomic gases resonantly excited to Rydberg states can exhibit strong optical nonlinearity at the single photon level. We observe that in such samples radiation trapping leads to an additional mechanism for Rydberg excitation.…
We have studied the behavior of cold Rydberg atoms embedded in an ultracold plasma. We demonstrate that even deeply bound Rydberg atoms are completely ionized in such an environment, due to electron collisions. Using a fast pulse extraction…
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…
When ultracold plasma is generated using photonization of laser cooled atoms, some atoms reach only upto Rydberg states. These in turn interact with the free electrons of the plasma and get ionized further. We study the interaction of…
Population dynamics in weakly-excited clouds of ultracold $^{87}$Rb Rydberg atoms were studied by means of trap loss, fluorescence detection, and state dependent stimulated emission. Rydberg atoms were excited to various nl Rydberg states…
We report the construction and characterization of an experimental setup for producing a cold gas of $^{40}$Ca atoms and excite them to high Rydberg states with a resonant three-photon-excitation scheme. The apparatus comprises four stages,…
Cold Rydberg atoms exposed to strong magnetic fields possess unique properties which open the pathway for an intriguing many-body dynamics taking place in Rydberg gases consisting of either matter or anti-matter systems. We review both the…
The results of a theoretical investigation of prompt many-body ionization are reported. Our calculations address an experiment that reported ionization in Rydberg gases for densities two orders of magnitude less than expected from…
Recent developments in the study of ultracold Rydberg gases demand an advanced level of experimental sophistication, in which high atomic and optical densities must be combined with excellent control of external fields and sensitive Rydberg…
We propose and demonstrate the laser cooling and trapping of Rydberg-dressed Sr atoms. By off-resonantly coupling the excited state of a narrow (7 kHz) cooling transition to a high-lying Rydberg state, we transfer Rydberg properties such as…
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…
Not long after metastable xenon was photoionized in a magneto-optical trap, groups in Europe and North America found that similar states of ionized gas evolved spontaneously from state-selected, high principal quantum number Rydberg gases.…
We investigate the Zel'dovich effect in the context of ultra-cold, harmonically trapped quantum gases. We suggest that currently available experimental techniques in cold-atoms research offer an exciting opportunity for a direct observation…
Experiments in dense, ultracold gases of rubidium Rydberg atoms show a considerable decrease of the radiative excited state lifetimes compared to dilute gases. This accelerated decay is explained by collective and cooperative effects,…
We develop an approach to generate finite-range atomic interactions via optical Rydberg-state excitation and study the underlying excitation dynamics in theory and experiment. In contrast to previous work, the proposed scheme is based on…
The dipole blockade of Rydberg excitations is a hallmark of the strong interactions between atoms in these high-lying quantum states. One of the consequences of the dipole blockade is the suppression of fluctuations in the counting…
Resonant electric dipole-dipole interactions between cold Rydberg atoms were observed using microwave spectroscopy. Laser-cooled Rb atoms in a magneto-optical trap were optically excited to 45d Rydberg states using a pulsed laser. A…
We discuss techniques to generate long-range interactions in a gas of groundstate alkali atoms, by weakly admixing excited Rydberg states with laser light. This provides a tool to engineer strongly correlated phases with reduced decoherence…
We present our results on the experiments with cold Rb Rydberg atoms in a magneto-optical trap (MOT). Characteristic features of our experiment were the excitation of Rydberg atoms in a small volume within the cold atom cloud and sorting of…
We show that Rydberg states in an ultra-cold gas can be excited with strongly preferred nearest-neighbor distance if densities are well below saturation. The scheme makes use of an echo sequence in which the first half of a laser pulse…