Asymmetric Rydberg blockade of giant excitons in Cuprous Oxide

Abstract

The ability to generate and control strong long-range interactions via highly excited electronic states has been the foundation for recent breakthroughs in a host of areas, from atomic and molecular physics [1, 2] to quantum optics [3, 4] and technology [5-7]. Rydberg excitons provide a promising solid-state realization of such highly excited states, for which record-breaking orbital sizes of up to a micrometer have indeed been observed in cuprous oxide semiconductors [8]. Here, we demonstrate the generation and control of strong exciton interactions in this material by optically producing two distinct quantum states of Rydberg excitons. This makes two-color pump-probe experiments possible that allow for a detailed probing of the interactions. Our experiments reveal the emergence of strong spatial correlations and an inter-state Rydberg blockade that extends over remarkably large distances of several micrometers. The generated many-body states of semiconductor excitons exhibit universal properties that only depend on the shape of the interaction potential and yield clear evidence for its vastly extended-range and power-law character.

Main script: 7 pages, 3 figures. Supplementary file 15 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (9)

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• Quantum fluids of light
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• Observation of mesoscopic crystalline structures in a two-dimensional Rydberg gas
• Cooperative atom-light interaction in a blockaded Rydberg ensemble
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• Polaritonic Feshbach Resonance