Millisecond-lived circular Rydberg atoms in a room-temperature experiment

Abstract

Circular Rydberg states are ideal tools for quantum technologies, with huge mutual interactions and extremely long lifetimes in the tens of milliseconds range, two orders of magnitude larger than those of laser-accessible Rydberg states. However, such lifetimes are observed only at zero temperature. At room temperature, blackbody-radiation-induced transfers annihilate this essential asset of circular states, which have thus been used mostly so far in specific, complex cryogenic experiments. We demonstrate here, on a laser-cooled atomic sample, a circular state lifetime of more than one millisecond at room temperature for a principal quantum number 60. The inhibition structure is a simple plane-parallel capacitor that efficiently inhibits the blackbody-radiation-induced transfers. One of the capacitor electrodes is fully transparent and provides complete optical access to the atoms, an essential feature for applications. This experiment paves the way to a wide use of circular Rydberg atoms for quantum metrology and quantum simulation.

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• Quantum sensing of microwave electric fields based on Rydberg atoms
• Long-Lived Circular Rydberg Qubits of Alkaline-Earth Atoms in Optical Tweezers
• Array of Individual Circular Rydberg Atoms Trapped in Optical Tweezers
• Interacting Circular Rydberg Atoms Trapped in Optical Tweezers
• Universal quantum processors in spin systems via robust local pulse sequences
• Spectroscopy of the ${}^{85}$Rb 4$D_{3/2}$ state for hyperfine-structure determination
• Threading an atom with light
• Quadrupole coupling of circular Rydberg qubits to inner shell excitations
• Extended Rydberg Lifetimes in a Cryogenic Atom Array
• Tunable two-species spin models with Rydberg atoms in circular and elliptical states
• Tailoring interaction ranges in atom arrays
• Programmable order by disorder effect and underlying phases through dipolar quantum simulators