2015/12/31 by Huai‐Zhi Wu, Huaizhi Wu, Yong Li +4 · 9 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Atomic physics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Coupling (piping) #Dissipative system #Excitation #Ion #Ionization #Laser #Materials science #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #Rydberg atom #Rydberg constant #Rydberg formula #Rydberg matter #Rydberg state #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.95.013842
published in Physical Review A 95(1) (American Physical Society) · Main text (8 pages, 8 figures)
openalex publication_date 2017/01/26 · arxiv created 2017/02/08 · arxiv updated 2017/02/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The excitation dynamics of a laser-driven Rydberg-atom system exhibits a cooperative effect due to the interatomic Rydberg-Rydberg interaction, but the large many-body system with inhomogeneous Rydberg coupling is hard to exactly solve or numerically study by density-matrix equations. In this paper, we find that the laser-driven Rydberg-atom system with most of the atoms being in the ground state can be described by a simplified interaction model resembling the optical Kerr effect if the distance-dependent Rydberg-Rydberg interaction is replaced by an infinite-range coupling. We can then quantitatively study the effect of the quantum fluctuations on the Rydberg excitation with the interatomic correlation involved and analytically calculate the statistical characteristics of the excitation dynamics in the steady state, revealing the quantum signature of the driven-dissipative Rydberg-atom system. The results obtained here will be of great interest for other spin-1/2 systems with spin-spin coupling.