Local Blockade of Rydberg Excitation in an Ultracold Gas

2004/02/21 by D. Tong, S. M. Farooqi, J. Stanojevic +8 · 10 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #physics.atom-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.93.063001

4 pages, 3 figures

arxiv created 2004/02/21 · openalex publication_date 2004/08/03 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

In the laser excitation of ultracold atoms to Rydberg states, we observe a dramatic suppression caused by van der Waals interactions. This behavior is interpreted as a local excitation blockade: Rydberg atoms strongly inhibit excitation of their neighbors. We measure suppression, relative to isolated atom excitation, by up to a factor of 6.4. The dependences of this suppression on both laser irradiance and atomic density are in good agreement with a mean-field model. These results are an important step towards using ultracold Rydberg atoms in quantum information processing.

Cited by

• Driven-dissipative dynamics of a strongly interacting Rydberg gas
• Atomic Rydberg Reservoirs for Polar Molecules
• All-optical routing of single photons by a one-atom switch controlled by a single photon
• Manipulating Rydberg atoms close to surfaces at cryogenic temperatures
• Strongly Correlated Gases of Rydberg-Dressed Atoms: Quantum and Classical Dynamics
• Coherent Population Trapping with Controlled Interparticle Interactions
• Kinetic Monte Carlo modeling of dipole blockade in Rydberg excitation experiment
• Observation of Rydberg blockade between two atoms
• Rydberg-blockade controlled-not gate and entanglement in a two-dimensional array of neutral-atom qubits
• Quantum Critical Behavior in Strongly Interacting Rydberg Gases