Spontaneous avalanche ionization of a strongly blockaded Rydberg gas

Abstract

We report the sudden and spontaneous evolution of an initially correlated gas of repulsively interacting Rydberg atoms to an ultracold plasma. Under continuous laser coupling we create a Rydberg ensemble in the strong blockade regime, which at longer times undergoes an ionization avalanche. By combining optical imaging and ion detection, we access the full information on the dynamical evolution of the system, including the rapid increase in the number of ions and a sudden depletion of the Rydberg and ground state densities. Rydberg-Rydberg interactions are observed to strongly affect the dynamics of plasma formation. Using a coupled rate-equation model to describe our data, we extract the average energy of electrons trapped in the plasma, and an effective cross-section for ionizing collisions between Rydberg atoms and atoms in low-lying states. Our results suggest that the initial correlations of the Rydberg ensemble should persist through the avalanche. This would provide the means to overcome disorder-induced-heating, and offer a route to enter new strongly-coupled regimes.

arXiv comment5 pages plus supplemental material

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• A versatile, high-power 460nm laser system for Rydberg excitation of ultracold potassium
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• Dissipative dynamics of atomic and molecular Rydberg gases: Avalanche to ultracold plasma states of strong coupling
• Formation of ultracold ion pairs through long-range Rydberg molecules
• A Weakly-Interacting Many-Body System of Rydberg Polaritons Based on Electromagnetically Induced Transparency
• Anisotropic deformation of Rydberg blockade sphere in few-atom systems
• Rydberg Macrodimers: Diatomic molecules on the micrometer scale
• Coulomb anti-blockade in a Rydberg dressed gas
• Simulations of prompt many-body ionization in a frozen Rydberg gas
• Inverted Ladder Type Optical Excitation of Potassium Rydberg States with Hot and Cold Ensembles
• Dipole-dipole induced global motion of Rydberg-dressed atom clouds
• Density dependence of the Ionization Avalanche in ultracold Rydberg gases
• Experimental demonstration of switching entangled photons based on the Rydberg blockade effect
• Nonlinear absorption in interacting Rydberg electromagnetically-induced-transparency spectra on two-photon resonance
• Phenomenology of many-body localization in bond-disordered spin chains
• Nonlocal nonlinear response of thermal Rydberg atoms and modulational instability in absorptive nonlinear media
• Extended Bose-Hubbard models with Rydberg macrodimer dressing
• What is the temperature of an ultra-cold Rydberg plasma?
• Expansion of an ultracold Rydberg plasma
• Fine Structure of the Rydberg Blockade Zone
• Microwave-coupled optical bistability in driven and interacting Rydberg gases
• Electron Temperature Relaxation in the Clusterized Ultracold Plasmas
• Anisotropic Interactions in Electric Field Polarized Ultracold Rydberg Gases
• Accurate density measurement of a cold Rydberg gas via non collisional two-body transitions
• On the fidelity of quantum information processing with Rydberg atoms: Role of the non-molecular resonances