Many-body interactions in a sample of ultracold Rydberg atoms with varying dimensions and densities

Abstract

Ultracold highly excited atoms in a magneto-optical trap ͑MOT͒ are strongly coupled by the dipole-dipole interaction. We have investigated the importance of many-body effects by controlling the dimensionality and density of the excited sample. We excited three different cylindrical volumes of atoms in the MOT to Rydberg states. At small radius, where the sample is nearly one-dimensional, many-body interactions are suppressed. At larger radii, the sample becomes three-dimensional and many-body effects are apparent.

Role of multilevel Rydberg interactions in electric-field-tuned Förster resonances

“…The explanation of the line broadening spectra at high densities requires that a Rydberg atom blockade be taken into account [20,21], but does not require the introduction of more than a two-body interaction between a pair of atoms. Such results can 2469-9926/2016/93(1)/012703 (5) 012703-1 ©2016 American Physical Society be contrasted with the interpretation proposed in other works appearing in the literature [11,14]. The experimental data and model agree well, suggesting, despite exciting a Förster resonance, that the gas dynamics are dominated by two-body interactions and the complexity of Rydberg interactions can mask the manifestation of many-body interactions.…”

“…More exact theoretical many-body approaches, like quantum Monte Carlo, are difficult to implement in systems of highly excited atoms. A standard approximation involves breaking the multipolar interactions between the atoms into a sum of two-body problems [12][13][14].…”

Determination of theRb85ng-series quantum defect by electric-field-induced resonant energy transfer between cold Rydberg atoms

“…[6]), but not for 31d (Ref. [13]). Energetics [7,12] rule out the process: 32d 5/2 + 32d 5/2 → 34p 3/2 + 30f as a possible explanation for these low-field resonances.…”

Effect of finite detection efficiency on the observation of the dipole-dipole interaction of a few Rydberg atoms

“…Population transfer between Rydberg states induced by such processes is a sensitive probe of DD interaction in atomic beams [10][11][12][13] and cold atom clouds [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24].…”

“…Such collisions are mediated by DD interaction and lie at the heart of the dipole-blockade effect and other related schemes of quantum information processing. They were investigated in numerous experiments [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24], but detection statistics at resonance collisions of a few Rydberg atoms was not studied yet (although recently a sub-Poissonian statistics of the MCP signals at the laser excitation of about 30 Rydberg atoms was studied both experimentally [25] and theoretically [26,27]). We have also implemented a new method to determine the absolute values of the detection efficiency and mean number of Rydberg atoms excited per laser pulse.…”