Related papers: Evidence for coherent collective Rydberg excitatio…
We present the coherent excitation of a single Rubidium atom to the Rydberg state (58d3/2) using a two-photon transition. The experimental setup is described in detail, as well as experimental techniques and procedures. The coherence of the…
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 investigate the collective aspects of Rydberg excitation in ultracold mesoscopic systems. Strong interactions between Rydberg atoms influence the excitation process and impose correlations between excited atoms. The manifestations of the…
Individually trapped Rydberg atoms show significant promise as a platform for scalable quantum simulation and for development of programmable quantum computers. In particular, the Rydberg blockade effect can be used to facilitate both fast…
One of the most striking features of the strong interactions between Rydberg atoms is the dipole blockade effect, which allows only a single excitation to the Rydberg state within the volume of the blockade sphere. Here we present a method…
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…
We present a combined experimental and theoretical study of the effects of Rydberg interactions on Autler-Townes spectra of ultracold gases of atomic strontium. Realizing two-photon Rydberg excitation via a long-lived triplet state allows…
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…
In an ensemble of laser-driven atoms involving strongly interacting Rydberg states, the excitation probability is usually strongly suppressed. In contrast, here we identify a regime in which the steady-state Rydberg excited fraction is…
Collective resonance of interacting particles has important implications in many-body quantum systems and their applications. Strong interactions can lead to a blockade that prohibits the excitation of a collective resonance of two or more…
We demonstrate the interaction-induced blockade effect in an ultracold $^{88}$Sr gas via studying the time dynamics of a two-photon excitation to the triplet Rydberg series $5\mathrm{s}n\mathrm{s}\, ^3\textrm{S}_1$ for five different…
The resonant dipole-dipole interaction between highly excited Rydberg levels dominates the interaction of neutral atoms at short distances scaling as $1/r^3$. Here we take advantage of the combined effects of strong dipole-dipole…
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…
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 demonstrate Rydberg blockade due to the charge-dipole interaction between a single Rb atom and a single RbCs molecule confined in optical tweezers. The molecule is formed by magnetoassociation of a Rb+Cs atom pair and subsequently…
We present an entanglement scheme for Rydberg atoms using the van der Waals interaction phase induced by Ramsey-type pulsed interactions. This scheme realizes not only controlled phase operations between atoms at a distance larger than…
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 study the appearance of correlated many-body phenomena in an ensemble of atoms driven resonantly into a strongly interacting Rydberg state. The ground state of the Hamiltonian describing the driven system exhibits a second order quantum…
We develop a theoretical approach for the dynamics of Rydberg excitations in ultracold gases, with a realistically large number of atoms. We rely on the reduction of the single-atom Bloch equations to rate equations, which is possible under…
Assembled arrays of individual atoms with Rydberg-mediated interactions provide a powerful platform for the simulation of many-body spin Hamiltonians as well as the implementation of universal gate-based quantum information processing. We…