paper

Electrical read out for coherent phenomena involving Rydberg atoms in thermal vapor cells

arXiv:1209.6550 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.123002

Abstract

We present a very sensitive and scalable method to measure the population of highly excited Rydberg states in a thermal vapor cell of rubidium atoms. We detect the Rydberg ionization current in a 5 mm electrically contacted cell. The measured current is found to be in excellent agreement with a theory for the Rydberg population based on a master equation for the three level problem including an ionization channel and the full Doppler distributions at the corresponding temperatures. The signal-to-noise ratio of the current detection is substantially better than purely optical techniques.

4 pages, 4 figures

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