2020/06/30 by Bongjune Kim, Ko-Tang Chen, Shih-Si Hsiao +11 · 12 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic physics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Condensed matter physics #Dipole #Electromagnetically induced transparency #Physics #Polariton #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum mechanics #Rydberg atom #Rydberg formula #Strong Light-Matter Interactions #physics.atom-ph #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s42005-021-00604-5
published in Communications Physics 4(1) (Nature Portfolio)
openalex publication_date 2021/05/20 · arxiv created 2021/05/25 · arxiv updated 2021/05/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Abstract The combination of Rydberg atoms and electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) has been extensively studied in the strong-interaction regime. Here we proposed utilizing an EIT medium with a high optical depth (OD) and a Rydberg state of low principal quantum number to create a many-body system of Rydberg polaritons in the weak-interaction regime. The phase shift and attenuation induced by the dipole–dipole interaction (DDI) were still significant, and can be viewed as the consequences of elastic and inelastic collisions among Rydberg polaritons. We further observed that the width of the transverse momentum distribution of Rydberg polaritons at the exit of the system became notably smaller as compared with that at the entrance. The observation demonstrates the cooling effect in this system. The μs-long interaction time due to the high-OD EIT medium plus the μm 2 -size collision cross section due to the DDI suggests a feasible platform of polariton Bose–Einstein condensation.