Mechanical effect of van der Waals interactions observed in real time in an ultracold Rydberg gas

Abstract

We present time-resolved spectroscopic measurements of Rydberg-Rydberg interactions in an ultracold gas, revealing the pair dynamics induced by long-range van der Waals interactions between the atoms. By detuning the excitation laser, a specific pair distribution is prepared. Penning ionization on a microsecond timescale serves as a probe for the pair dynamics under the influence of the attractive long-range forces. Comparison with a Monte Carlo model not only explains all spectroscopic features but also gives quantitative information about the interaction potentials. The results imply that the interaction-induced ionization rate can be influenced by the excitation laser. Surprisingly, interaction-induced ionization is also observed for Rydberg states with purely repulsive interactions.

References in corpus (6)

• Dipole Blockade and Quantum Information Processing in Mesoscopic Atomic Ensembles
• Fast quantum gates for neutral atoms
• Bose-Einstein condensation in trapped dipolar gases
• Local Blockade of Rydberg Excitation in an Ultracold Gas
• Suppression of Excitation and Spectral Broadening Induced by Interactions in a Cold Gas of Rydberg Atoms
• Macrodimers: ultralong range Rydberg molecules

Cited by in corpus (58)

• Dipole blockade in a cold Rydberg atomic sample
• Consequences of Zeeman Degeneracy for van der Waals Blockade between Rydberg Atoms
• Nonlocal Nonlinear Optics in cold Rydberg Gases
• Quantum critical behavior in strongly interacting Rydberg gases
• Evidence of antiblockade in an ultracold Rydberg gas
• Electric-field induced dipole blockade with Rydberg atoms
• Many-body theory of excitation dynamics in an ultracold Rydberg gas
• Survival Probabilities in Coherent Exciton Transfer with Trapping
• Trapped Rydberg Ions: From Spin Chains to Fast Quantum Gates
• Rabi oscillations and excitation trapping in the coherent excitation of a mesoscopic frozen Rydberg gas
• Spontaneous avalanche ionization of a strongly blockaded Rydberg gas
• Imaging the evolution of an ultracold strontium Rydberg gas
• Non-adiabatic motional effects and dissipative blockade for Rydberg atoms excited from optical lattices or microtraps
• Cooperative excitation and many-body interactions in a cold Rydberg gas
• Direct observation of ultrafast many-body electron dynamics in an ultracold Rydberg gas
• Experimental signatures of an absorbing-state phase transition in an open driven many-body quantum system
• Modeling many-particle mechanical effects of an interacting Rydberg gas
• Driven-dissipative many-body systems with mixed power-law interactions: Bistabilities and temperature-driven non-equilibrium phase transitions
• Two-center resonant photo ionization
• Driven-dissipative dynamics of a strongly interacting Rydberg gas
• Motion of Rydberg atoms induced by resonant dipole-dipole interactions
• Two-electron excitation of an interacting cold Rydberg gas
• Dynamics of Low-Density Ultracold Rydberg Gases
• Cold and Ultracold Rydberg Atoms in Strong Magnetic Fields
• Strongly Coupled Plasmas via Rydberg-Blockade of Cold Atoms
• Many-body Rabi oscillations of Rydberg excitation in small mesoscopic samples
• Electronically excited cold ion crystals
• Van der Waals explosion of cold Rydberg clusters
• Rabi oscillations between ground and Rydberg states and van der Waals blockade in a mesoscopic frozen Rydberg gas
• Dipole-Dipole coupled double Rydberg molecules
• Three-body bound states in dipole-dipole interacting Rydberg atoms
• Autoionization of an ultracold Rydberg gas through resonant dipole coupling
• Spectroscopy of a cold strontium Rydberg gas
• Adiabatic entanglement transport in Rydberg aggregates
• The very slow expansion of an ultracold plasma formed in a seeded supersonic molecular beam of NO
• Rydberg Aggregates
• Optical non-linearity in a dynamical Rydberg gas
• Ultrafast Many-Body Dynamics in an Ultracold Rydberg-Excited Atomic Mott Insulator
• Strong Spin-Motion Coupling in the Ultrafast Dynamics of Rydberg Atoms
• Dissipative dynamics of atomic and molecular Rydberg gases: Avalanche to ultracold plasma states of strong coupling
• Rydberg crystallization detection by statistical means
• Pulsed excitation of Rydberg-atom-pair states in an ultracold Cs gas
• Rydberg-Rydberg interaction profile from the excitation dynamics of ultracold atoms in lattices
• Rydberg Macrodimers: Diatomic molecules on the micrometer scale
• Quantum dynamics of long-range interacting systems using the positive-P and gauge-P representations
• Tracking Rydberg atoms with Bose-Einstein Condensates
• Simulations of prompt many-body ionization in a frozen Rydberg gas
• Exciton induced directed motion of unconstrained atoms in an ultracold gas
• Two-center dielectronic recombination in slow atomic collisions
• Interaction-Enhanced Imaging of Rydberg P states
• In situ observation of chemistry in Rydberg molecules within a coherent solvent
• Topological spin models in Rydberg lattices
• Interatomic distance dependence of resonant energy-transfer phenomena
• Dynamics of atoms within atoms
• Non-adiabatic dynamics in Rydberg gases with random atom positions
• Probing spin-motion coupling of two Rydberg atoms by a Stern-Gerlach-like experiment
• Strong-field photoionization in two-center atomic systems
• Role of mechanical effects on the excitation spectra of microwave-dressed Rydberg states in a cold atomic cloud