Seeded excitation avalanches in off-resonantly driven Rydberg gases

Abstract

We report an experimental investigation of the facilitated excitation dynamics in off-resonantly driven Rydberg gases by separating the initial off-resonant excitation phase from the facilitation phase, in which successive facilitation events lead to excitation avalanches. We achieve this by creating a controlled number of initial seed excitations. Greater insight into the avalanche mechanism is obtained from an analysis of the full counting distributions. We also present simple mathematical models and numerical simulations of the excitation avalanches that agree well with our experimental results.

arXiv comment13 pages, 6 figures

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• Epidemic growth and Griffiths effects on an emergent network of excited atoms
• Observation of many-body dynamics of Rydberg atoms based on antiblockade using two-color excitation
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• Anomalous excitation facilitation in inhomogeneously broadened Rydberg gases
• Spectral Signatures of Vibronic Coupling in Trapped Cold Ionic Rydberg Systems
• Quench dynamics of a dissipative Rydberg gas in the classical and quantum regime
• Deterministic facilitated excitation of the weakly-driven atom in heteronuclear Rydberg atom pairs beyond antiblockade