Driven-dissipative dynamics of a strongly interacting Rydberg gas
arXiv:1207.2659 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.86.043403
Abstract
We study the non-equilibrium many-body dynamics of a cold gas of ground state alkali atoms weakly admixed by Rydberg states with laser light. On a timescale shorter than the lifetime of the dressed states, effective dipole-dipole or van der Waals interactions between atoms can lead to the formation of strongly correlated phases, such as atomic crystals. Using a semiclassical approach, we study the long-time dynamics where decoherence and dissipative processes due to spontaneous emission and blackbody radiation dominate, leading to heating and melting of atomic crystals as well as particle losses. These effects can be substantially mitigated by performing active laser cooling in the presence of atomic dressing.
20 pages, 15 figures
References in corpus (20)
- Strongly correlated 2D quantum phases with cold polar molecules: controlling the shape of the interaction potential
- Cooperative atom-light interaction in a blockaded Rydberg ensemble
- Quasiclassical calculations of BBR-induced depopulation rates and effective lifetimes of Rydberg nS, nP and nD alkali-metal atoms with n < 80
- Evidence for coherent collective Rydberg excitation in the strong blockade regime
- Quantum gates and multi-particle entanglement by Rydberg excitation blockade and adiabatic passage
- An experimental and theoretical guide to strongly interacting Rydberg gases
- Cold polar molecules in 2D traps: Tailoring interactions with external fields for novel quantum phases
- Quantum critical behavior in strongly interacting Rydberg gases
- Quantum computing with collective ensembles of multi-level systems
- Rydberg excitation of Bose-Einstein condensates
- Electric-field induced dipole blockade with Rydberg atoms
- Spatially resolved observation of dipole-dipole interaction between Rydberg atoms
- Rydberg-induced Solitons: Three-dimensional Self-trapping of Matter Waves
- Repulsive shield between polar molecules
- Two-Stage Melting in Systems of Strongly Interacting Rydberg Atoms
- Efficient quantum repeater based on deterministic Rydberg gates
- Ionization of Sodium and Rubidium nS, nP and nD Rydberg atoms by blackbody radiation
- Resonant electric dipole-dipole interactions between cold Rydberg atoms in a magnetic field
- Effective Hamiltonians in quantum optics: a systematic approach
- Probing the interaction between Rydberg-dressed atoms through interference