Strong dipole-exchange interactions due to spontaneously produced contaminant states can trigger rapid dephasing in many-body Rydberg ensembles [E. Goldschmidt et al., PRL 116, 113001 (2016)]. Such broadening has serious implications for many proposals to coherently use Rydberg interactions, particularly Rydberg dressing proposals. The dephasing arises as a runaway process where the production of the first contaminant atoms facilitates the creation of more contaminant atoms. Here we study the time dependence of this process with stroboscopic approaches. Using a pump-probe technique, we create an excess "pump" Rydberg population and probe its effect with a different "probe" Rydberg transition. We observe a reduced resonant pumping rate and an enhancement of the excitation on both sides of the transition as atoms are added to the pump state. We also observe a timescale for population growth significantly shorter than predicted by homogeneous mean-field models, as expected from a clustered growth mechanism where high-order correlations dominate the dynamics. These results support earlier works and confirm that the time scale for the onset of dephasing is reduced by a factor which scales as the inverse of the atom number. In addition, we discuss several approaches to minimize these effects of spontaneous broadening, including stroboscopic techniques and operating at cryogenic temperatures. It is challenging to avoid the unwanted broadening effects, but under some conditions they can be mitigated.
We experimentally and theoretically investigate the dephasing rates of the coherent evolution of a resonantly driven pseudo spin emersed in a reservoir of pseudo spins. The pseudo spin is realized by optically exciting 87 Rb atoms to a Rydberg state. Hence, the upper spin states are coupled via the strong van der Waals interaction. Two different experimental techniques to measure the dephasing rates are shown: the 'rotary echo' technique known from nuclear magnetic resonance physics and electromagnetically induced transparency. The experiments are performed in a dense frozen Rydberg gas, eithe…
The performance of many control tasks with Rydberg atoms can be improved via suppression of the motion-induced dephasing between ground and Rydberg states of neutral atoms. The dephasing often occurs during the {\it gap} time when the atom is shelved in a Rydberg state before its deexcitation. By using laser fields to induce specific extra phase change to the Rydberg state during the gap time, it is possible to faithfully transfer the Rydberg state back to the ground state after the gap. Although the Rydberg state transitions back and forth between different eigenstates during the gap time, it…
Recent experiments with strongly interacting, driven Rydberg ensembles have introduced a promising setup for the study of self-organized criticality (SOC) in cold atom systems. Based on this setup, we theoretically propose a control mechanism for the paradigmatic avalanche dynamics of SOC in terms of a time-dependent drive amplitude. This gives access to a variety of avalanche dominated, self-organization scenarios, prominently including self-organized criticality, as well as sub- and supercritical dynamics. We analyze the dependence of the dynamics on external scales and spatial dimensionalit…
We experimentally study the effects of the anisotropic Rydberg-interaction on $D$-state Rydberg polaritons slowly propagating through a cold atomic sample. In addition to the few-photon nonlinearity known from similar experiments with Rydberg $S$-states, we observe the interaction-induced dephasing of Rydberg polaritons at very low photon input rates into the medium. We develop a model combining the propagation of the two-photon wavefunction through our system with nonperturbative calculations of the anisotropic Rydberg-interaction to show that the observed effect can be attributed to pairwise…
An approach to fast entanglement generation based on Rydberg dephasing of collective excitations (spin-waves) in large, optically thick atomic ensembles is proposed. Long-range $1/r^3$ atomic interactions are induced by microwave mixing of opposite-parity Rydberg states. Required long coherence times are achieved via four-photon excitation and read-out of long wavelength spin-waves. The dephasing mechanism is shown to have favorable, approximately exponential, scaling for entanglement generation.
We perform spectroscopic measurements of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in a strongly interacting Rydberg gas, and observe a significant spectral shift of the transparency from the single-atom EIT resonance as well as a spectral dephasing of the same order. We characterize the shift and dephasing as a function of atomic density, probe Rabi frequency, and principal quantum number of Rydberg states, and demonstrate that the observed spectral shift and dephasing are reduced if the size of a Gaussian atomic cloud is increased. We simulate our experiment with a semi-analytical model…
A theory of Rydberg atom interactions is used to derive analytical forms for the spin wave pair correlation function in laser-excited cold-atom vapors. This function controls the quantum statistics of light emission from dense, inhomogeneous clouds of cold atoms of various spatial dimensionalities. The results yield distinctive scaling behaviors on the microsecond timescale, including generalized exponential decay. A detailed comparison is presented with a recent experiment on a cigar-shaped atomic ensemble [Y. Dudin and A. Kuzmich, Science 336, 887 (2012)], in which Rb atoms are excited to a …
Light propagation through an ensemble of ultra-cold Rydberg atoms in electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) configuration is studied. In strongly interacting Rydberg EIT media, non-linear optical effects lead to a non-trivial dependence of the degree of probe beam attenuation on the medium density and on its initial intensity. We develop a Monte Carlo rate equation model that self-consistently includes the effect of the probe beam attenuation to investigate the steady state of the Rydberg medium driven by two laser fields. We compare our results to recent experimental data and to resul…
We study the impact of dephasing on the excitation dynamics of a cloud of ultracold two-level Rydberg atoms for both resonant and off-resonant laser excitation, using the wave function Monte Carlo (MCWF) technique. We find that while for resonant laser driving, dephasing mainly leads to an increase of the Rydberg population and a decrease of the Mandel Q parameter, at off-resonant driving strong dephasing toggles between direct excitation of pairs of atoms and subsequent excitation of single atoms, respectively. These two excitation mechanisms can be directly quantified via the pair correlatio…
We propose a Rydberg molecule dressing scheme to create strong and long-ranged interactions at selective distances. This is achieved through laser coupling ground-state atoms off-resonantly to an attractive molecular curve of two interacting Rydberg atoms. Although dephasing due to Rydberg state decay occurs in all dressing schemes, an advantage of the molecule dressing is that a large ratio of dressed interaction to dephasing rate can be realized at large atomic separations. In an optical lattice or tweezer setting, we show that the strong interaction permits the fast generation of spin squee…
We report on time-resolved pulsed four-wave mixing (FWM) signals in a thermal Rubidium vapor involving a Rydberg state. We observe FWM signals with dephasing times up to 7 ns, strongly dependent on the excitation bandwidth to the Rydberg state. The excitation to the Rydberg state is driven by a pulsed two-photon transition on ns time scales. Combined with a third cw de-excitation laser, a strongly directional and collective emission is generated according to a combination of the phase matching effect and averaging over Doppler classes. In contrast to a previous report [1] using off-resonant FW…
In the presence of strong dephasing noise the dynamics of Rydberg gases becomes effectively classical, due to the rapid decay of quantum superpositions between atomic levels. Recently a great deal of attention has been devoted to the stochastic dynamics that emerges in that limit, revealing several interesting features, including kinetically-constrained glassy behaviour, self-similarity and aggregation effects. However, the non-equilibrium physics of these systems, in particular in the regime where coherent and dissipative processes contribute on equal footing, is yet far from being understood…
When ground state atoms are excited to a Rydberg state, van der Waals interactions among them can lead to a strong suppression of the excitation. Despite the strong interactions the evolution can still be reversed by a simple phase shift in the excitation laser field. We experimentally prove the coherence of the excitation in the strong blockade regime by applying an `optical rotary echo' technique to a sample of magnetically trapped ultracold atoms, analogous to a method known from nuclear magnetic resonance. We additionally measured the dephasing time due to the interaction between the Rydbe…
Simulating neural network criticality and resource dynamics with Rydberg gases
RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau（莱茵兰-普法尔茨技术大学凯泽斯劳滕-兰道分校）；State Research Center OPTIMAS（OPTIMAS州立研究中心）；Max Planck Graduate Center with Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (MPGC)（美因茨约翰内斯·古腾堡大学马克斯·普朗克研究生院）
We report results of a ground-state entanglement protocol for a pair of Cs atoms separated by 6~$μ$m, combining the Rydberg blockade mechanism with a two-photon Raman transitions to prepare the $\vertΨ^+\rangle=(\vert 10\rangle+\vert 01\rangle)/\sqrt{2}$ Bell state with a loss-corrected fidelity of 0.81(5), equal to the best demonstrated fidelity for atoms trapped in optical tweezers but without the requirement for dynamically adjustable interatomic spacing. Qubit state coherence is also critical for quantum information applications, and we characterise both ground-state and ground-Rydberg dep…
We present evidence for Rydberg-Rydberg interaction in a gas of rubidium atoms above room temperature. Rabi oscillations on the nanosecond timescale to different Rydberg states are investigated in a vapor cell experiment. Analyzing the atomic time evolution and comparing to a dephasing model we find a scaling with the Rydberg quantum number n that is consistent with van der Waals interaction. Our results show that the interaction strength can be larger than the kinetic energy scale (Doppler width) which is the requirement for realization of thermal quantum devices in the GHz regime.
We present a combined experimental and theoretical study of the effects of Rydberg interactions on Autler-Townes spectra of ultracold gases of atomic strontium. Realizing two-photon Rydberg excitation via a long-lived triplet state allows us to probe the thus far unexplored regime where Rydberg state decay presents the dominant decoherence mechanism. The effects of Rydberg interactions are observed in shifts, asymmetries, and broadening of the measured atom-loss spectra. The experiment is analyzed within a one-body density matrix approach, accounting for interaction-induced level shifts and de…
A dynamics regime of Rydberg atoms, unselective ground-state blockade (UGSB), is proposed in the context of Rydberg antiblockade (RAB), where the evolution of two atoms is suppressed when they populate in an identical ground state. UGSB is used to implement a SWAP gate in one step without individual addressing of atoms. Aiming at circumventing common issues in RAB-based gates including atomic decay, Doppler dephasing, and fluctuations in the interatomic coupling strength, we modify the RAB condition to achieve a dynamical SWAP gate whose robustness is much greater than that of the nonadiabatic…
The motion-induced dephasing is a severe problem that limits the accuracy of a quantum control process by using external laser fields in neutral Rydberg atoms. This dephasing is a major issue that limits the realizable fidelity of a quantum entangling gate with neutral atoms when there is a {\it gap} time for the Rydberg atom to drift freely. We find that such a dephasing can be largely suppressed by using a transition in a `V'-type dual-rail configuration. The left~(right) arm of this `V' represents a transition to a Rydberg state $|r_{1(2)}\rangle$ with a Rabi frequency $Ωe^{ikz}~(Ωe^{-ikz})…
By coupling a probe transition to a Rydberg state using electro-magnetically induced transparency (EIT) we map the strong dipole-dipole interactions onto an optical field. We characterize the resulting cooperative optical non-linearity as a function of probe strength and density. We show that the effect of dipole blockade cannot be described using a mean-field but requires an $N$-atom cooperative model. Good quantitative agreement is obtained for three atoms per blockade with the $n=60$ Rydberg state. We place an upper-limit on the dephasing rate of the blockade spheres of $<110$ kHz.
We present a pulsed four-wave mixing (FWM) scheme via a Rydberg state to create, store and retrieve collective Rydberg polaritons. The storage medium consists of a gas of thermal Rb atoms confined in a 220 μm thick cell, which are heated above room temperature. The experimental sequence consists of a pulsed excitation of Rydberg polaritons via the D1 line, a variable delay or storage time, and a final retrieval pulse via the D2 line. The lifetime of the Rydberg polaritons is around 1.2 ns, almost entirely limited by the excitation bandwidth and the corresponding motional dephasing of the atoms…
High-fidelity entangling quantum gates based on Rydberg interactions are required for scalable quantum computing with neutral atoms. Their realization, however, meets a major stumbling block -- the motion-induced dephasing of the transition between the ground and Rydberg states. By using quantum interference between different detuned Rabi oscillations, we propose a practical scheme to realize a class of accurate entangling Rydberg quantum gates subject to a minimal dephasing error. We show two types of such gates, $U_{1}$ and $U_{2}$, in the form of $\text{diag}\{1, e^{iα}, e^{iγ}, e^{iβ}\}$, …
The combination of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) with the nonlinear interaction between Rydberg atoms provides an effective interaction between photons. In this paper, we investigate the storage of optical pulses as collective Rydberg atomic excitations in a cold atomic ensemble. By measuring the dynamics of the stored Rydberg polaritons, we experimentally demonstrate that storing a probe pulse as Rydberg polaritons strongly enhances the Rydberg mediated interaction compared to the slow propagation case. We show that the process is characterized by two time scales. At short st…
We present an experimental study of cavity assisted Rydberg atom electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) using a high-finesse optical cavity ($F \sim 28000$). Rydberg atoms are excited via a two-photon transition in a ladder-type EIT configuration. A three-peak structure of the cavity transmission spectrum is observed when Rydberg EIT is generated inside the cavity. The two symmetrically spaced side peaks are caused by bright-state polaritons, while the central peak corresponds to a dark-state polariton. Anti-crossing phenomenon and the effects of mirror adsorbate electric fields are st…
The preparation of light pulses with well-defined quantum properties requires precise control at the individual photon level. Here, we demonstrate exact and controlled multi-photon subtraction from incoming light pulses. We employ a cascaded system of tightly confined cold atom ensembles with strong, collectively enhanced coupling of photons to Rydberg states. The excitation blockade resulting from interactions between Rydberg atoms limits photon absorption to one per ensemble and engineered dephasing of the collective excitation suppresses stimulated re-emission of the photon. We experimental…
We study the dark-time decay of the retrieval efficiency for light stored in a Rydberg state in an ultracold gas of $^{87}$Rb atoms based on electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). Using low atomic density to avoid dephasing caused by atom-atom interactions, we measure a $1/e$ time of 30 $μ$s for the $80S$ state in free expansion. One of the dominant limitations is the combination of photon recoil and thermal atomic motion at 0.2 $μ$K. If the 1064-nm dipole trap is left on, then the $1/e$ time is reduced to 13 $μ$s, in agreement with a model taking differential light shifts and gravita…
We propose a scheme to simulate lattice spin models based on strong and long-range interacting Rydberg atoms stored in a large-spacing array of magnetic microtraps. Each spin is encoded in a collective spin state involving a single $nP$ Rydberg atom excited from an ensemble of ground-state alkali atoms prepared via Rydberg blockade. After the excitation laser is switched off the Rydberg spin states on neighbouring lattice sites interact via general isotropic or anisotropic spin-spin interactions. To read out the collective spin states we propose a single Rydberg atom triggered avalanche scheme…
We examine the adiabatic preparation of crystalline phases of Rydberg excitations in a one-dimensional lattice gas by frequency sweep of the excitation laser, as proposed by Pohl et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 043002 (2010)] and recently realized experimentally by Schauß et al. [Science 347, 1455 (2015)]. We find that the preparation of crystals of a few Rydberg excitations in a unitary system of several tens of atoms requires exceedingly long times for the adiabatic following of the ground state of the system Hamiltonian. Using quantum stochastic (Monte-Carlo) wavefunction simulations, we show…
The collective effect of large amounts of atoms exhibit an enhanced interaction between light and atoms. This holds great interest in quantum optics, and quantum information. When a collective excited state of a group of atoms during Rabi oscillation is varying, the oscillation exhibits rich dynamics. Here, we experimentally observe a size-reduction effect of the Rydberg collective state during Rabi oscillation in cold atomic dilute gases. The Rydberg collective state was first created by the Rydberg quantum memory, and we observed a decreased oscillation frequency effect by measuring the time…
We study the interplay of photons interacting with an artificial atom in the presence of a controlled dephasing. Such artifical atoms consisting of several independent scatterer can exhibit remarkable properties superior to single atoms with a prominent example being a superatom based on Rydberg blockade. We demonstrate that the induced dephasing allows for the controlled absorption of a single photon from an arbitrary incoming probe field. This unique tool in photon-matter interaction opens a way for building novel quantum devices and several potential applications like a single photon transi…
Quantum holonomic gates hold built-in resilience to local noises and provide a promising approach for implementing fault-tolerant quantum computation. We propose to realize high-fidelity holonomic $(N+1)$-qubit controlled gates using Rydberg atoms confined in optical arrays or superconducting circuits. We identify the scheme, deduce the effective multi-body Hamiltonian, and determine the working condition of the multiqubit gate. Uniquely, the multiqubit gate is immune to systematic errors, i.e., laser parameter fluctuations and motional dephasing, as the $N$ control atoms largely remain in the…
Optimized EIT-Based Multi-Target CNOT^k Gates in Heteronuclear Rydberg Atom Arrays
School of Physics, Beihang University（北京航空航天大学物理学院）；State Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance and Atomic and Molecular Physics, Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics, Innovation Academy for Precision Measurement Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院精密测量科学与技术创新研究院武汉物理与数学研究所磁共振与原子分子物理国家重点实验室）
In a recent article Wang et al. (Class. Quantum Grav. 23 (2006) L59), demonstrated that the phase of a particle fluctuates due to interactions with random deviations of a conformal gravitational field. Furthermore they demonstrated that atom interferometers are sensitive to these fluctuations and that sensitivity to Planck scale effects could be achieved with a sufficiently sensitive interferometer. In this paper we demonstrate that a class of entangled states, the N-atom Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states, provide a better scaling than atom interferometers and that current experiments a…
We propose to apply atom-chip techniques to the trapping of a single atom in a circular Rydberg state. The small size of microfabricated structures will allow for trap geometries with microwave cut-off frequencies high enough to inhibit the spontaneous emission of the Rydberg atom, paving the way to complete control of both external and internal degrees of freedom over very long times. Trapping is achieved using carefully designed electric fields, created by a simple pattern of electrodes. We show that it is possible to excite, and then trap, one and only one Rydberg atom from a cloud of groun…
An ensemble of excited atoms can synchronize emission of light collectively in a process known as superradiance when its characteristic size is smaller than the wavelength of emitted photons. The underlying superradiance depends strongly on electromagnetic (photon) fields surrounding the atomic ensemble. High mode densities of microwave photons from $300\,$K blackbody radiation (BBR) significantly enhance decay rates of Rydberg states to neighbouring states, enabling superradiance that is not possible with bare vacuum induced spontaneous decay. Here we report observations of the superradiance …
An array of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice (Mott insulator) excited to a state where single electron wave-functions spatially overlap would represent a new and ideal platform to simulate exotic electronic many-body phenomena in the condensed phase. However, this highly excited non-equilibrium system is expected to be so short-lived that it has eluded observation so far. Here, we demonstrate the first step toward its realization by exciting high-lying electronic (Rydberg) states of the atomic Mott insulator with a coherent ultrashort laser pulse. Beyond a threshold principal quantum numb…
Strong Quantum Mpemba Effect from Exact Slow-Mode Selection in Constrained Rydberg Chains
School of Physics, Nankai University（南开大学物理学院）；School of Physics, Hangzhou Normal University（杭州师范大学物理学院）；Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院物理研究所北京凝聚态物理国家实验室）；School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学物理科学学院）
