Steady-state crystallization of Rydberg excitations in an optically driven lattice gas

Abstract

We study resonant optical excitations of atoms in a one-dimensional lattice to the Rydberg states interacting via the van der Waals potential which suppresses simultaneous excitation of neighboring atoms. Considering two- and three-level excitation schemes, we analyze the dynamics and stationary state of the continuously-driven, dissipative many-body system employing time-dependent density-matrix renormalization group (t-DMRG) simulations. We show that two-level atoms can exhibit only nearest neighbor correlations, while three-level atoms under dark-state resonant driving can develop finite-range crystalline order of Rydberg excitations. We present an approximate rate equation model whose analytic solution yields qualitative understanding of the numerical results.

5 pages,3 figures

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Observation of mesoscopic crystalline structures in a two-dimensional Rydberg gas
• Dissipative Many-body Quantum Optics in Rydberg Media
• Stimulated adiabatic passage in a dissipative Rydberg superatom
• Classical stochastic measurement trajectories: Bosonic atomic gases in an optical cavity and quantum measurement backaction