A recent proposal by Hallam et al. suggested using the chaotic properties of the semiclassical equations of motion, obtained by the time dependent variational principle (TDVP), as a characterization of quantum chaos. In this paper, we calculate the Lyapunov spectrum of the semiclassical theory approximating the quantum dynamics of a strongly interacting Rydberg atom array, which lead to periodic motion. In addition, we calculate the effect of quantum fluctuations around this approximation, and obtain the escape rate from the periodic orbit. We compare this rate to the rate extracted from the exact solution of the quantum theory, and find an order of magnitude discrepancy. We conclude that in this case, chaos in the TDVP equations does not correpond to phsyical properties of the system. Our result complement those of Ho et al. regarding the escape rate from the semiclassical periodic orbit.
A Rydberg molecule is composed of an outer electron that collides on the residual ionic core. Typical states of Rydberg molecules display entanglement between the outer electron and the core. In this work we quantify the average entanglement of molecular eigenstates and further investigate the time evolution of entanglement production from initially unentangled states. The results are contrasted with the underlying classical dynamics, obtained from the semiclassical limit of the core-electron collision. Our findings indicate that entanglement is not simply correlated with the degree of classic…
We investigate a microwave ionization of highly excited atom in a low frequency field and show that such a process may be studied on the bases of map for the electron energy change during the period of the electron motion between two subsequent passages at aphelion. Simple approximate criterion results to the threshold field for transition to chaotic behavior very close to the numerical results. We show that transition from adiabatic to chaotic ionization mechanism takes place when the field frequency to the electron's Kepler frequency ration approximately equals 0.1.
We propose how to achieve strong photon antibunching effect in a cavity-QED system coupled with two Rydberg-Rydberg interaction atoms. Via calculating the equal time second order correlation function g(2)(0), we find that the unconventional photon blockade and the conventional photon blockade appear in the atom-driven scheme, and they are both significantly affected by the Rydberg-Rydberg interaction. We also find that under appropriate parameters, the photon antibunching and the mean photon number can be significantly enhanced by combining the conventional photon blockade and the unconvention…
Resonant laser excitation of multiple Rydberg atoms are prohibited, leading to Rydberg blockade, when the long-range van der Waals interactions are stronger than the laser-atom coupling. Rydberg blockade can be violated, i.e. simultaneous excitation of more than one Rydberg atoms, by off-resonant laser excitation, causing an excitation antiblockade. Rydberg antiblockade gives rise to strongly correlated many-body dynamics and spin-orbit coupling, and also finds quantum computation applications. Instead of commonly used van der Waals interactions, we investigate antiblockade dynamics of two Ryd…
We explore the fluorescence signals from a pair of atoms driven towards Rydberg states on a three-level ladder transition. The dipole--dipole interactions between Rydberg excited atoms significantly distort the dark state and electromagnetically induced transparency behavior observed with independent atoms and, thus, their steady state light emission. We calculate and analyze the temporal correlations between intensities and amplitudes of the signals emitted by the atoms and explain their origin in the atomic Rydberg state interactions.
A proposal for the generation of singlet states of three $Λ$-type Rydberg atoms is presented. The singlet state is prepared through the combination of a Rydberg state and an EPR pair, and the scheme relies on the Rydberg blockade effect which prevents the simultaneous excitation of the two atoms to a Rydberg state. In addition, some frequency detuning between lasers and atomic transitions is set to eliminate the degenerate of the two ground states. And finally, a series of numerical simulations are made to show the feasibility of the scheme.
We calculate the Abraham force and the Aharonov-Casher force exerted by the electromagnetic quantum vacuum on alkaline atoms in highly excited, long-living Rydberg states. Because of their high polarizability and long-life time such atoms are good candidates to observe these forces.
The dipole blockade of multiple Rydberg excitations in mesoscopic atomic ensembles allows the implementation of various quantum information tasks using collective states of cold, trapped atoms. Precise coherent manipulations of the collective ground and single Rydberg excitation states of an atomic ensemble requires the knowledge of the number of atoms with small uncertainty. We present an efficient method to acquire such information by interrogating the atomic ensemble with resonant pulses while monitoring the resulting Rydberg excitations. We show that after several such steps accompanied by…
We demonstrate Rabi flopping of small numbers of $\rm{^{87}Rb}$ atoms between ground and Rydberg states with $n\le 43$. Coherent population oscillations are observed for single atom flopping, while the presence of two or more atoms decoheres the oscillations. We show that these observations are consistent with van der Waals interactions of Rydberg atoms.
The dipole blockade between Rydberg atoms has been proposed as a basic tool in quantum information processing with neutral atoms. Here we demonstrate experimentally the Rydberg blockade of two individual atoms separated by 4 $μ$m. Moreover, we show that, in this regime, the single atom excitation is enhanced by a collective two-atom behavior associated with the excitation of an entangled state. This observation is a crucial step towards the deterministic manipulation of entanglement of two or more atoms using the Rydberg dipole interaction.
Scheme to prepare three-dimensional entangled state between a pair of Rydberg atoms is proposed via dissipative dynamics and Electromagnetic Induced Transparency (EIT) associated with the single-atom dark state. The prepared entangled state is the dark state of the whole system. The schemes are feasible no matter the system initially in arbitrary purity or mixed states and do not have accurate requirements on evolution time. In contrast to most of the former Rydberg-atombased dissipative schemes, the Rydberg-Rydberg interaction (RRI) strength do not need to satisfy a certain relation with lase…
We propose a method for the determination of the interaction potential of Rydberg atoms. Specifically, we consider a laser-driven Rydberg gas confined in a one-dimensional lattice and demonstrate that the Rydberg atom number after a laser excitation cycle as a function of the laser detuning provides a measure for the Rydberg interaction coefficient. With the lattice spacing precisely known, the proposed scheme only relies on the measurement of the number of Rydberg atoms and thus circumvents the necessity to map the interaction potential by varying the interparticle separation.
Transfer mechanism of orbital angular moment(OAM) of light to trapped ground-state atoms under paraxial approximation is well known. Here we show how optical OAM of a Laguerre-Gaussian(LG) beam under paraxial approximation can be transferred to trapped Rydberg atoms. Optical OAM is shown to be transferable to a Rydberg electronic state in dipole transition. The Gaussian part of the profile of the LG beam, which is generally neglected , is found to have an important effect on the OAM transfer to the Rydberg atoms. Numerical calculations are calculated based on this theory for Rubidium Rydberg a…
We propose a two-qubit gate for neutral atoms in which one of the logical state components adiabatically follows a two-atom dark state formed by the laser coupling to a Rydberg state and a strong, resonant dipole-dipole exchange interaction between two Rydberg excited atoms. Our gate exhibits optimal scaling of the intrinsic error probability $E \propto (Bτ)^{-1}$ with the interatomic interaction strength $B$ and the Rydberg state lifetime $τ$. Moreover, the gate is resilient to variations in the interaction strength, and even for finite probability of double Rydberg excitation, the gate does …
Nonadiabatic geometric quantum computation provides a means to perform fast and robust quantum gates. It has been implemented in various physical systems, such as trapped ions, nuclear magnetic resonance and superconducting circuits. Another system being adequate for implementation of nonadiabatic geometric quantum computation may be Rydberg atoms, since their internal states have very long coherence time and the Rydberg-mediated interaction facilitates the implementation of a two-qubit gate. Here, we propose a scheme of nonadiabatic geometric quantum computation based on Rydberg atoms, which …
We show that the interaction between Rydberg atomic states can provide continuous spin squeezing of atoms with two ground states. The interaction prevents the simultaneous excitation of more than a single atom in the sample to the Rydberg state, and we propose to utilize this blockade effect to realize an effective collective spin hamiltonian J_x^2-J_y^2. With this hamiltonian the quantum mechanical uncertainty of the spin variable J_x+J_y can be reduced significantly.
Unlike the previous theoretical results based on standard quantum mechanics that has established the nearly elliptical shapes for the centre-of-mass motion using numerical simulations, we show analytically that the Bohmian trajectories in Rydberg atoms are nearly elliptical.
We propose a mechanism of ground-state blockade between two $N$-type Rydberg atoms in virtue of Rydberg-antiblockade effect and Raman transition. Inspired by the quantum Zeno effect, the strong Rydberg antiblockade interaction plays a role in frequently measuring one ground state of two, leading to a blockade effect for double occupation of the corresponding quantum state. By encoding the logic qubits into the ground states, we efficiently avoid the spontaneous emission of the excited Rydberg state, and maintain the nonlinear Rydberg-Rydberg interaction at the same time. As applications, we di…
We present and characterize a versatile experimental setup which allows for excitation and detection of Rydberg atoms in quantum gases. The novel concept of the setup features two charged particle detectors and eight electrical field plates inside the vacuum chamber, which allows the detection and manipulation of Rydberg atoms. The setup presented here is applicable to all atomic species used in the field of quantum gases. We describe and characterize the production of Bose-Einstein condensates, the excitation scheme into Rydberg states, the detection of Rydberg states by field ionization foll…
A simple theory of the Rydberg atoms ionisation by electromagnetic pulses and microwave field is presented. The analysis is based on the scale transformation which reduces the number of parameters and reveals the functional dependencies of the processes. It is shown that the observed ionisation of Rydberg atoms by subpicosecond electromagnetic pulses scale classically. The threshold electric field required to ionise a Rydberg state may be simply evaluated in the photonic basis approach for the quantum dynamics or from the multiphoton ionisation theory.
We consider three level atoms driven by two resonant light fields in a ladder scheme where the upper level is a highly excited Rydberg state. We show that the dipole--dipole interactions between Rydberg excited atoms prevents the formation of single particle dark states and leads to strongly correlated photon emission from atoms separated by distances large compared to the emission wavelength. For two atoms, correlated photon pairs are emitted with an angular distribution given by a coherent sum of the independent dipolar fields.
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…
Interaction between Rydberg atoms can significantly modify Rydberg excitation dynamics. Under a resonant driving field the Rydberg-Rydberg interaction in high-lying states can induce shifts in the atomic resonance such that a secondary Rydberg excitation becomes unlikely leading to the Rydberg blockade effect. In a related effect, off-resonant coupling of light to Rydberg states of atoms contributes to the Rydberg anti-blockade effect where the Rydberg interaction creates a resonant condition that promotes a secondary excitation in a Rydberg atomic gas. Here, we study the light-matter interact…
Semiunitary transformation is applied to discuss supersymmetrization of cold Rydberg atoms. In the limit of vanishing kinetic energy the lowest angular momentum of the supersymmetric cold Rydberg atom is $3\hbar/2$. A possible experimental verification is suggested.
We present a blueprint for building a fault-tolerant universal quantum computer with Rydberg atoms. Our scheme, which is based on the surface code, uses individually-addressable optically-trapped atoms as qubits and exploits electromagnetically induced transparency to perform the multi-qubit gates required for error correction and computation. We discuss the advantages and challenges of using Rydberg atoms to build such a quantum computer, and we perform error correction simulations to obtain an error threshold for our scheme. Our findings suggest that Rydberg atoms are a promising candidate f…
The coherent control of mesoscopic ensembles of atoms and Rydberg atom blockade are the basis for proposed quantum devices such as integrable gates and single photon sources. So far, experimental progress has been limited to complex experimental setups that use ultracold atoms. Here, we show that coherence times of ~100ns are achievable with coherent Rydberg atom spectroscopy in um sized thermal vapor cells. We investigated states with principle quantum numbers between 30 and 50. Our results demonstrate that microcells with a size on the order of the blockade radius, ~2um, at temperatures of 1…
Assembled arrays of individual atoms with Rydberg-mediated interactions provide a powerful platform for the simulation of many-body spin Hamiltonians as well as the implementation of universal gate-based quantum information processing. We demonstrate the first realization of Rydberg excitations and controlled interactions in microlens-generated multisite trap arrays of reconfigurable geometry. We utilize atom-by-atom assembly for the deterministic preparation of pre-defined 2D structures of rubidium Rydberg atoms with exactly known mutual separations and selectable interaction strength. By ada…
We propose a scheme for preparation of large-scale entangled $GHZ$ states and $W$ states with neutral Rydberg atoms. The scheme mainly depends on Rydberg antiblockade effect, i.e., as the Rydberg-Rydberg-interaction (RRI) strength and the detuning between the atom transition frequency and the classical laser frequency satisfies some certain conditions, the effective Rabi oscillation between the two ground states and the two excitation Rydberg states would be generated. The prominent advantage is that both two-multiparticle $GHZ$ states and two-multiparticle $W$ states can be fused in this mode…
We study the possibility to use interaction between a polar molecule in the ground electronic and vibrational state and a Rydberg atom to construct two-qubit gates between molecular qubits and to coherently control molecular states. A polar molecule within the electron orbit in a Rydberg atom can either shift the Rydberg state, or form Rydberg molecule. Both the atomic shift and the Rydberg molecule states depend on the initial internal state of the polar molecule, resulting in molecular state dependent van der Waals or dipole-dipole interaction between Rydberg atoms. Rydberg atoms mediated in…
We analyze excitation of two ground state atoms to a double Rydberg state by a two-photon chirped optical pulse in the regime of adiabatic rapid passage. For intermediate Rydberg-Rydberg interaction strengths, relevant for atoms separated by $\sim$ten $μ$m, adiabatic excitation can be achieved at experimentally feasible Rabi frequencies and chirp rates of the pulses, resulting in high transfer efficiencies. We also study the adiabatic transfer between ground and Rydberg states as a means to realize a controlled phase gate between atomic qubits.
With a resonant amplitude-modulation field on two Rydberg atoms, we propose a Rydberg antiblockade (RAB) regime, where the Rabi oscillation between collective ground and excited states is induced. A controlled-Z gate can be yielded through a Rabi cycle. Further, several common issues of the RAB gates are solved by modifying the parameter relation. The gate fidelity and the gate robustness against the control error are enhanced with a shaped pulse. The requirement of control precision of the Rydberg-Rydberg interaction strength is relaxed. In addition, the atomic excitation is restrained and th…
We investigate the collective aspects of Rydberg excitation in ultracold mesoscopic systems. Strong interactions between Rydberg atoms influence the excitation process and impose correlations between excited atoms. The manifestations of the collective behavior of Rydberg excitation are the many-body Rabi oscillations, spatial correlations between atoms as well as the fluctuations of the number of excited atoms. We study these phenomena in detail by numerically solving the many-body Schrëdinger equation.
We study the dynamics of a system composed of two coupled cavities, each containing a single Rydberg atom. The interplay between Rydberg-Rydberg interaction and photon hopping enables the transition of the atoms from the collective ground state to the double Rydberg excitation state by individually interacting with the hybrid cavity modes and suppressing the up conversion process between them. The atomic transition is accompanied by the two-photon absorption and emission of the hybrid modes. Since the energy level structure of the atom-cavity system is photon number dependent, there is only a …
We investigate the implementation of a controlled-Z gate on a pair of Rydberg atoms in spatially separated dipole traps where the joint excitation of both atoms into the Rydberg level is strongly suppressed (the Rydberg blockade). We follow the adiabatic gate scheme of Jaksch et al. [1], where the pair of atoms are coherently excited using lasers, and apply it to the experimental setup outlined in Gaëtan et al. [2]. We apply optimisation to the experimental parameters to improve gate fidelity, and consider the impact of several experimental constraints on the gate success.
We apply reservoir engineering to construct a thermal environment with controllable temperature in an ultracold atomic Rydberg system. A Boltzmann distribution of the system's eigenstates is produced by optically driving a small environment of ultracold atoms, which is coupled to a photonic continuum through spontaneous emission. This technique provides a useful tool for quantum simulation of dynamics coupled to a thermal environment. Additionally, we demonstrate that pure eigenstates, such as Bell states, can be prepared in the Rydberg atomic system using this method.
We propose an efficient free-space scheme to create single photons in a well-defined spatiotemporal mode. To that end, we first prepare a single source atom in an excited Rydberg state. The source atom interacts with a large ensemble of ground-state atoms via a laser-mediated dipole-dipole exchange interaction. Using an adiabatic passage with a chirped laser pulse, we produce a spatially extended spin wave of a single Rydberg excitation in the ensemble, accompanied by the transition of the source atom to another Rydberg state. The collective atomic excitation can then be converted to a propaga…
We propose an approach to detect individual Rydberg molecules with each molecule consisting of two atoms in different Rydberg states. The scheme exploits the movement of atoms in the presence of an external force that exerts only on atoms in one Rydberg state. Since the movement of atoms in the other Rydberg state depends on whether they are bound with atoms directly driven by the applied force, bound atoms can be distinguished from unbound atoms. By utilizing electromagnetically induced transparency, it is possible to non-destructively image the positions of molecules. The scheme is sensitive…
A quantum-feedback-based scheme is proposed for generating multipartite entanglements of Rydberg atoms in a dissipative optical cavity. The Rydberg blockade mechanism efficiently prevents double excitations of the system, which is further exploited to speed up the stabilization of an entangled state with a single Rydberg state excitation. The corresponding feedback operations are greatly simplified, since only one regular atom needs to be controlled during the whole process, irrespective of the number of particles. The form of entangled state is also adjustable via regulating the Rabi frequenc…
Neutral atoms excited to Rydberg states can interact with each other via dipole-dipole interaction, which results in a physical phenomenon named Rydberg blockade mechanism. The effect attracts much attention due to its potential applications in quantum computation and quantum simulation. Quantum teleportation has been the core protocol in quantum information science playing a key role in efficient long-distance quantum communication. Here, we first propose the implementation of teleportation scheme with neutral atoms via Rydberg blockade, in which the entangled states of qubits can readily be …
We propose a nonadiabatic non-Abelian geometric quantum operation scheme to realize universal quantum computation with mesoscopic Rydberg atoms. A single control atom entangles a mesoscopic ensemble of target atoms through long-range interactions between Rydberg states. We demonstrate theoretically that both the single qubit and two-qubit quantum gates can achieve high fidelities around or above 99.9% in ideal situations. Besides, to address the experimental issue of Rabi frequency fluctuation (Rabi error) in Rydberg atom and ensemble, we apply the dynamical-invariant-based zero systematic-err…
A dissipative scheme is proposed to prepare tripartite $W$ state in a Rydberg-atom-cavity system. It is an organic combination of quantum Zeno dynamics, Rydberg antiblockade and atomic spontaneous emission to turn the tripartite $W$ state into the unique steady state of the whole system. The robustness against the loss of cavity and the feasibility of the scheme are demonstrated thoroughly by the current experimental parameters, which leads to a high fidelity above $98\%$.
Schemes for creation of N particle entangled Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states are important for understanding multi-particle non-classical correlations. Here, a theoretical scheme for creation of a multi-particle GHZ state implemented on a target ensemble of N, $Λ$ three-level Rydberg atoms and a single Rydberg atom as a control using Stimulated Raman Adiabatic Passage (STIRAP) is presented. We work in the Rydberg blockade regime for the ensemble atoms induced due to excitation of the control atom to a high lying Rydberg level. It is shown that using STIRAP, atoms from one ground state…
Rydberg atoms provide a wide range of possibilities to tailor interactions in a quantum gas. Here we report on Rydberg excitation of Bose-Einstein condensed 87Rb atoms. The Rydberg fraction was investigated for various excitation times and temperatures above and below the condensation temperature. The excitation is locally blocked by the van der Waals interaction between Rydberg atoms to a density-dependent limit. Therefore the abrupt change of the thermal atomic density distribution to the characteristic bimodal distribution upon condensation could be observed in the Rydberg fraction. The obs…
The excitation dynamics of a laser-driven Rydberg gas exhibits a cooperative effect due to the interatomic Rydberg-Rydberg interaction, but the large many-body system with inhomogeneous Rydberg coupling is hard to exactly solved or numerically study by density matrix equations. In this paper, we find that the laser-driven Rydberg gas with most of the atoms being in the ground state can be described by a simplified interaction model resembling the optical Kerr effect if the distance-dependent Rydberg-Rydberg interaction is replaced by an infinite-range coupling. We can then quantitatively study…
We study two-photon excitation of Rydberg states of atoms under stimulated adiabatic passage with delayed laser pulses. We find that the combination of strong interaction between the atoms in Rydberg state and the spontaneous decay of the intermediate exited atomic state leads to the Rydberg excitation of precisely one atom within the atomic ensemble. The quantum Zeno effect offers a lucid interpretation of this result: the Rydberg blocked atoms repetitively scattering photons effectively monitor a randomly excited atom which therefore remains in the Rydberg state. This system can be used for …
This review summarizes experimental works performed over the last decade by several groups on the manipulation of a few individual interacting Rydberg atoms. These studies establish arrays of single Rydberg atoms as a promising platform for quantum state engineering, with potential applications to quantum metrology, quantum simulation and quantum information.
We propose an efficient method to filter out single atoms from trapped ensembles with unknown number of atoms. The method employs stimulated adiabatic passage to reversibly transfer a single atom to the Rydberg state which blocks subsequent Rydberg excitation of all the other atoms within the ensemble. This triggers the excitation of Rydberg blockaded atoms to short lived intermediate states and their subsequent decay to untrapped states. Using an auxiliary microwave field to carefully engineer the dissipation, we obtain a nearly deterministic single-atom source. Our method is applicable to sm…
We report on the selective addressing of an individual atom in a pair of single-atom microtraps separated by $3\;μ$m. Using a tunable light-shift, we render the selected atom off-resonant with a global Rydberg excitation laser which is resonant with the other atom, making it possible to selectively block this atom from being excited to the Rydberg state. Furthermore we demonstrate the controlled manipulation of a two-atom entangled state by using the addressing beam to induce a phase shift onto one component of the wave function of the system, transferring it to a dark state for the Rydberg ex…
We demonstrate spatially resolved, coherent excitation of Rydberg atoms on an atom chip. Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) is used to investigate the properties of the Rydberg atoms near the gold coated chip surface. We measure distance dependent shifts (~10 MHz) of the Rydberg energy levels caused by a spatially inhomogeneous electric field. The measured field strength and distance dependence is in agreement with a simple model for the electric field produced by a localized patch of Rb adsorbates deposited on the chip surface during experiments. The EIT resonances remain narrow (…
We study resonant optical excitations of strongly-interacting Rydberg states of atoms in the presence of relaxations. We employ the quantum stochastic (Monte Carlo) wavefunctions to simulate the dissipative dynamics of tens of atoms in two-dimensional lattices. We show that under typical experimental conditions involving slow Rydberg state decay and sizable relaxation of atomic coherences, on the time scale of several microseconds the atomic ensemble approaches a stationary state in which much of the quantum correlations between the atoms have decayed away. The steady state, however, exhibits …
