Rabi oscillations between ground and Rydberg states and van der Waals blockade in a mesoscopic frozen Rydberg gas
OPEN ACCESS
Author / Producer
Date
2008-04
Publication Type
Journal Article
ETH Bibliography
no
Citations
Altmetric
OPEN ACCESS
Data
Rights / License
Abstract
We present a detailed analysis of our recent observation of synchronous Rabi oscillations between the electronic ground state and Rydberg states in a mesoscopic ensemble containing roughly 100 ultracold atoms (Reetz-Lamour et al submitted, Preprint 0711.4321). The mesoscopic cloud is selected out of a sample of laser-cooled Rb atoms by optical pumping. The atoms are coupled to a Rydberg state with principal quantum number around 30 by a two-photon scheme employing flat-top laser beams. The influence of residual spatial intensity fluctuations as well as sources of decoherence such as redistribution to other states, radiative lifetime and laser bandwidth are analysed. The results open up new possibilities for the investigation of coherent many-body phenomena in dipolar Rydberg gases. As an example we demonstrate the van der Waals blockade, a variant of the dipole blockade, for a mesoscopic atom sample.
Permanent link
Publication status
published
External links
Editor
Book title
Journal / series
Volume
10
Pages / Article No.
45026
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Event
Edition / version
Methods
Software
Geographic location
Date collected
Date created
Subject
Organisational unit
03449 - Merkt, Frédéric / Merkt, Frédéric