Photon correlation transients in a weakly blockaded Rydberg ensemble

Abstract

The non-linear and non-local effects in atomic Rydberg media under electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) make it a versatile platform for fundamental studies and applications in quantum information. In this paper, we study the dynamics of a Rydberg-EIT system in an ensemble that allows for more than one Rydberg excitation in the propagation direction. The density of two-level atoms is such that transient superradiant effects occur. We experimentally observe a cross-over between coherent collective emission (`flash') of two-level atoms to a Rydberg dressed regime ('dressed flash') under EIT condition. The complex dynamics are characterised using both intensity and time correlation measurements. We show that while steady-state EIT gives a second order correlation $g^{(2)}=0.79\pm 0.04$, the Rydberg-dressed flash exhibits anti-bunching down to $0.2\pm 0.04$.

References in corpus (23)

• Coherent optical detection of highly excited Rydberg states using electromagnetically induced transparency
• Cooperative optical non-linearity due to dipolar interactions in an ultra-cold Rydberg ensemble
• Cooperative atom-light interaction in a blockaded Rydberg ensemble
• Photon-Photon Interactions via Rydberg Blockade
• Storage and control of optical photons using Rydberg polaritons
• Electromagnetically induced transparency with Rydberg atoms
• Storing light with subradiant correlations in arrays of atoms
• Nonlocal Nonlinear Optics in cold Rydberg Gases
• Superradiance in a Large and Dilute Cloud of Cold Atoms in the Linear-Optics Regime
• Observation of single-photon superradiance and the cooperative Lamb shift in an extended sample of cold atoms
• A room temperature single-photon source based on strongly interacting Rydberg atoms
• A Photon-Photon Quantum Gate Based on Rydberg Interactions
• Observation of room-temperature spontaneous superradiance from single diamond nanocrystals
• Mesoscopic Rydberg-blockaded ensembles in the superatom regime and beyond
• Dissipative Many-body Quantum Optics in Rydberg Media
• Enhancement of Rydberg-mediated single-photon nonlinearities by electrically tuned Förster Resonances
• Collective resonance fluorescence in small and dense atom clouds: Comparison between theory and experiment
• Dephasing of multiparticle Rydberg excitations for fast entanglement generation
• Electromagnetically induced transparency in an entangled medium
• Photon-photon gate via the interaction between two collective Rydberg excitations
• Correlated photon dynamics in dissipative Rydberg media
• Population of collective modes in light scattering by many atoms
• Fast-Responding Property of Electromagnetically Induced Transparency in Rydberg Atoms

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Data capacity scaling of a distributed Rydberg atomic receiver array
• Controlled multi-photon subtraction with cascaded Rydberg superatoms as single-photon absorbers
• The Robustness of a Collectively Encoded Rydberg Qubit
• Strongly non-linear interaction between non-classical light and a blockaded Rydberg atomic ensemble
• Transient dynamics of the quantum light retrieved from Rydberg polaritons
• Exploiting non-linear effects in optomechanical sensors with continuous photon-counting
• Propagation of light in cold emitter ensembles with quantum position correlations due to static long-range dipolar interactions