Rydberg blockade in an ultracold strontium gas revealed by two-photon excitation dynamics

Abstract

We demonstrate the interaction-induced blockade effect in an ultracold ${}^{88}$Sr gas via studying the time dynamics of a two-photon excitation to the triplet Rydberg series $5\mathrm{s}n\mathrm{s}{}^3{\text{S}}_1$ for five different principle quantum numbers $n$ ranging from 19 to 37. By using a multi-pulse excitation sequence to increase the detection sensitivity we could identify Rydberg-excitation-induced atom losses as low as $<1\%$. Based on an optical Bloch equation formalism, treating the Rydberg-Rydberg interaction on a mean-field level, the van der Waals coefficients are extracted from the observed dynamics, which agree fairly well with \emph{ab initio} calculations.

arXiv comment10 pages, 6 figures including 2 in the appendix, comments are welcome

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• Analytical solutions of the Schrödinger equation for two confined atoms with van der Waals interaction
• Single Sr Atoms in Optical Tweezer Arrays for Quantum Simulation
• Rydberg electromagnetically induced transparency and absorption of strontium triplet states in a weak microwave field