Evidence for Coherent Collective Rydberg Excitation in the Strong Blockade Regime

2007/01/31 by Rolf Heidemann, R. Heidemann, Ulrich Raitzsch +7 · 7 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #quant-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.99.163601

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 163601 (2007) · 5 pages, 4 figures

arxiv created 2007/06/19 · openalex publication_date 2007/10/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We report on strong van der Waals blockade in two-photon Rydberg excitation of ultracold magnetically trapped 87Rb atoms. The excitation dynamics was investigated for a large range of densities and laser intensities and shows a full saturation and a strong suppression with respect to single-atom behavior. The observed scaling of the initial increase with density and laser intensity provides evidence for coherent collective excitation. This coherent collective behavior, that was observed for up to several thousand atoms per blockade volume, is generic for all mesoscopic systems which are able to carry only one single quantum of excitation.

Citations

• Electromagnetically induced transparency: Optics in coherent media

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