Dynamics of Low-Density Ultracold Rydberg Gases

Abstract

Population dynamics in weakly-excited clouds of ultracold ${}^{87}$Rb Rydberg atoms were studied by means of trap loss, fluorescence detection, and state dependent stimulated emission. Rydberg atoms were excited to various nl Rydberg states via continuous two-photon excitation from a magneto-optical trap. A stimulated emission probe laser was then used to bring the Rydberg atoms down to the 6P${}_{3/2}$ state, allowing state-dependent detection of the Rydberg atoms. Measurements of trap loss and fluorescent emission reveal information about the evolution of the Rydberg populations. In particular, population in the initial Rydberg state quickly transfers to other Rydberg states by a non-collisional mechanism, likely superradiant emission. The trap-loss measurements are consistent with black-body ionization as the dominant loss mechanism.

9 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Evidence for coherent collective Rydberg excitation in the strong blockade regime
• Consequences of Zeeman Degeneracy for van der Waals Blockade between Rydberg Atoms
• Quantum computing with collective ensembles of multi-level systems
• Rydberg excitation of Bose-Einstein condensates
• Spectroscopic observation of resonant electric dipole-dipole interactions between cold Rydberg atoms
• Autler-Townes spectroscopy of the $5S_{1/2}-5P_{3/2}-44D$ cascade of cold ${}^{85}$Rb atoms
• Ionization of Sodium and Rubidium nS, nP and nD Rydberg atoms by blackbody radiation

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Electromagnetically induced transparency of an interacting cold Rydberg ensemble
• Mechanisms for Lasing with Cold Atoms as the Gain Medium
• High-efficiency cluster-state generation with atomic ensembles via the dipole-blockade mechanism