Optical non-linearity in a dynamical Rydberg gas

Abstract

We use the technique of electro-magnetically induced transparency (EIT) to probe the effect of attractive dipole-dipole interactions in a highly excited Rydberg gas. The transient character of the EIT response is investigated by rapidly scanning the probe laser through resonance. We characterize the resulting cooperative optical non-linearity as a function of probe strength, density and scan direction. For the 58D${}_{5/2}$ Rydberg state, an atom density of $1.6\times 10^{10}$cm${}^{-3}$ and a positive frequency scan we measure a third-order non-linearity of ${\chi }^{(3)}=5\times 10^{-7}$ m${}^2$V${}^{-2}$. For the reverse scan we observe a second order non-linearity of ${\chi }^{(2)}=5\times 10^{-6}$ mV${}^{-1}$. The contrasting behaviour can be explained in terms of motional effects and resonant excitation of Rydberg pairs.

11 pages, 5 figure

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Nonlocal Nonlinear Optics in cold Rydberg Gases
• Observation and measurement of "giant" dispersive optical non-linearities in an ensemble of cold Rydberg atoms
• Enhanced third-order and fifth-order Kerr nonlinearities in a cold atomic system via Rydberg-Rydberg interaction
• Observation of a large, resonant, cross-Kerr nonlinearity in a free-space Rydberg medium
• Rydberg-induced optical nonlinearities from a cold atomic ensemble trapped inside a cavity
• Giant Kerr nonlinearities and magneto-optical rotations in a Rydberg-atom gas via double electromagnetically induced transparency
• Optical non-linearity in a dynamical Rydberg gas
• Non-linear absorption and density dependent dephasing in Rydberg EIT-media
• Intensity and amplitude correlations in the fluorescence from atoms with interacting Rydberg states
• Electromagnetically Induced Transparency of Interacting Rydberg Atoms with Two-Body dephasing
• Interaction-Enhanced Imaging of Rydberg P states