Collective excitation of Rydberg-atom ensembles beyond the $\sqrt{N}$ enhancement

Abstract

In an ensemble of laser-driven atoms involving strongly interacting Rydberg states, the excitation probability is usually strongly suppressed. In contrast, here we identify a regime in which the steady-state Rydberg excited fraction is enhanced by the interaction. This effect is associated with the build-up of many-body coherences, induced by coherent multi-photon excitations between collective states. The excitation enhancement should be observable under currently-existing experimental conditions, and may serve as a direct probe for the presence of coherent multi-photon dynamics involving collective quantum states.

7 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Strong atom-field coupling for Bose-Einstein condensates in an optical cavity on a chip
• Strong Coupling of a Spin Ensemble to a Superconducting Resonator
• Cavity QED with a Bose-Einstein condensate
• Observation of mesoscopic crystalline structures in a two-dimensional Rydberg gas
• Evidence for coherent collective Rydberg excitation in the strong blockade regime
• Storage and control of optical photons using Rydberg polaritons
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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Effective dynamics of strongly dissipative Rydberg gases
• Interacting photon pulses in Rydberg medium
• De-excitation spectroscopy of strongly interacting Rydberg gases
• Many-body radiative decay in strongly interacting Rydberg ensembles
• Nonlinear absorption in interacting Rydberg electromagnetically-induced-transparency spectra on two-photon resonance
• Anomalous excitation enhancement with Rydberg-dressed atoms
• Deterministic facilitated excitation of the weakly-driven atom in heteronuclear Rydberg atom pairs beyond antiblockade