We show that induced dipole-dipole interactions allow for photon blockade in subwavelength ensembles of two-level, ground-state neutral atoms. Our protocol relies on the energy shift of the single-excitation, superradiant state of $N$ atoms, which can be engineered to yield an effective two-level system. A coherent pump induces Rabi oscillation between the ground state and a collective bright state, with at most a single excitation shared among all atoms. The possibility of using clock transitions that are long-lived and relatively robust against stray fields, alongside new prospects on experiments with subwavelength lattices, makes our proposal a promising alternative for quantum information protocols.
Rydberg blockade sphere persists an intriguing picture by which a number of collective many-body effects caused by the strong Rydberg-Rydberg interactions can be clearly understood and profoundly investigated. In the present work, we develop a new definition for the effective two-atom blockade radius and show that the original spherically shaped blockade surface would be deformed when the real number of atoms increases from two to three. This deformation of blockade sphere reveals spatially anisotropic and shrunken properties which strongly depend on the interatomic distance. In addition, we a…
We show that two-time, second-order correlations of scattered photons from planar arrays and chains of atoms display nonclassical features that can be described by a superatom picture of the canonical single-atom $g_2(τ)$ resonance fluorescence result. For the superatom, the single-atom linewidth is replaced by the linewidth of the underlying collective low light-intensity eigenmode. Strong light-induced dipole-dipole interactions lead to a correlated response, suppressed joint photon detection events, and dipole blockade that inhibits multiple excitations of the collective atomic state. For t…
Results of numerical Monte Carlo simulations for the Stark-tuned Förster resonance and dipole blockade between two to five cold rubidium Rydberg atoms in various spatial configurations are presented. The effects of the atoms' spatial uncertainties on the resonance amplitude and spectra are investigated. The feasibility of observing coherent Rabi-like population oscillations at a Förster resonance between two cold Rydberg atoms is analyzed. Spectra and the fidelity of the Rydberg dipole blockade are calculated for various experimental conditions, including nonzero detuning from the Förster reso…
We study the long-range interaction of a single ion with a highly excited ultracold Rydberg atom and report on the direct observation of ion-induced Rydberg excitation blockade mediated over tens of micrometer distances. Our hybrid ion-atom system is directly produced from an ultracold atomic ensemble via near-threshold photo-ionization of a single Rydberg excitation, employing a two-photon scheme which is specifically suited for generating a very low-energy ion. The ion's motion is precisely controlled by small electric fields, which allows us to analyze the blockade mechanism for a range of …
We propose to use adiabatic rapid passage with a chirped laser pulse in the strong dipole blockade regime to deterministically excite only one Rydberg atom from randomly loaded optical dipole traps or optical lattices. The chirped laser excitation is shown to be insensitive to the random number \textit{N} of the atoms in the traps. Our method overcomes the problem of the $\sqrt {N} $ dependence of the collective Rabi frequency, which was the main obstacle for deterministic single-atom excitation in the ensembles with unknown \textit{N}, and can be applied for single-atom loading of dipole trap…
The dipole blockade effect at laser excitation of mesoscopic ensembles of Rydberg atoms lies in the fact that the excitation of one atom to a Rydberg state blocks the excitation of other atoms due to the shift in the collective energy levels of interacting Rydberg atoms. It is used to obtain the entangled qubit states based on single neutral atoms in optical traps. In this paper, we present our experimental results on the observation of the dipole blockade for mesoscopic ensembles of 1-5 atoms when they are detected by the selective field ionization method. We investigated the spectra of the t…
We study a novel regime of the Rydberg excitation blockade using highly Stark-shifted, yet long-living, states of Rb atoms subject to electric fields above the classical ionization limit. Such states allow tuning the dipole-dipole interaction strength while their ionization rate can be changed over two orders of magnitude by small variations of the electric field. We demonstrate laser excitation of the interacting Rydberg states followed by their detection using controlled ionization and magnified imaging with high spatial and temporal resolution. Our work reveals the hitherto unexplored possi…
The spin-wave (SW) NOON state is an $N$-particle Fock state with two atomic spin-wave modes maximally entangled. Attributed to the property that the phase is sensitive to collective atomic motion, the SW NOON state can be utilized as a novel atomic interferometer and has promising application in quantum enhanced measurement. In this paper we propose an efficient protocol to deterministically produce the atomic SW NOON state by employing Rydberg blockade. Possible errors in practical manipulations are analyzed. A feasible experimental scheme is suggested. Our scheme is far more efficient than t…
We study theoretically and experimentally the competing blockade and anti-blockade effects induced by spontaneously generated contaminant Rydberg atoms in driven Rydberg systems. These contaminant atoms provide a source of strong dipole-dipole interactions and play a crucial role in the system's behavior. We study this problem theoretically using two different approaches. The first is a cumulant expansion approximation, in which we ignore third-order and higher connected correlations. Using this approach for the case of resonant drive, a many-body blockade radius picture arises, and we find qu…
We investigate the collective excitation effect in a scheme where three identical Rydberg atoms are arranged in an equilateral triangular lattice. By using a static electric field polarizing the atomic dipoles, the dipole-dipole interactions between two Rydberg atoms are essentially anisotropic and can even disappear in the several special resonance cases. For that fact, we observe collectively enhanced excitation probability of single Rydberg atom in resonant areas in the case of strong blockade, and that of double or triple Rydberg atoms in the case of partial blockade. To give more evidence…
The Rydberg blockade induces strongly correlated many-body effects in Rydberg atom arrays, including rich ground-state phases and many-body scar states in the excitation spectrum. In this letter, we propose a composite spin representation that can provide a unified description for major features in this system. The composite spin combines Rydberg excitation and the auxiliary fermions, which are introduced to implement the Rydberg blockade constraint automatically. First, we focus on the PXP model describing one-dimensional arrays with the Rydberg blocking radius being a lattice spacing. Using …
We theoretically investigate the transport properties of cold bosonic atoms in a quasi one-dimensional triple-well potential that consists of two large outer wells, which act as microscopic source and drain reservoirs, and a small inner well, which represents a quantum-dot-like scattering region. Bias and gate "voltages" introduce a time-dependent tilt of the triple-well configuration, and are used to shift the energetic level of the inner well with respect to the outer ones. By means of exact diagonalization considering a total number of six atoms in the triple-well potential, we find diamond…
We discuss a Rydberg atom chain with a tunable blockade radius from the gauge theoretic perspective. When the blockade radius is one lattice spacing, this system can be formulated in terms of the PXP model, and there is a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ Ising phase transition known to be equivalent to a confinement-deconfinement transition in a gauge theory, the lattice Schwinger model. Further increasing the blockade radius, one can add a next-nearest neighbor (NNN) interaction into the PXP model. We discuss the interpretation of NNN interaction in terms of the gauge theory and how finite NNN interaction alte…
Recent experiments have demonstrated how quantum-mechanical impurities can be created within strongly correlated quantum gases and used to probe the coherence properties of these systems [S. Palzer, C. Zipkes, C. Sias, and M. Köhl, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 150601 (2009).]. Here we present a phenomenological model to simulate such an output coupler for a Tonks-Girardeau gas that shows qualitative agreement with the experimental results for atom transport and output coupling. Our model allows us to explore nonequilibrium transport phenomena in ultracold quantum gases and leads us to predict a regim…
Interaction blockade occurs when strong interactions in a confined few-body system prevent a particle from occupying an otherwise accessible quantum state. Blockade phenomena reveal the underlying granular nature of quantum systems and allow the detection and manipulation of the constituent particles, whether they are electrons, spins, atoms, or photons. The diverse applications range from single-electron transistors based on electronic Coulomb blockade to quantum logic gates in Rydberg atoms. We have observed a new kind of interaction blockade in transferring ultracold atoms between orbitals …
One of the most striking features of the strong interactions between Rydberg atoms is the dipole blockade effect, which allows only a single excitation to the Rydberg state within the volume of the blockade sphere. Here we present a method that spatially visualizes this phenomenon in an inhomogeneous gas of ultra-cold rubidium atoms. In our experiment we scan the position of one of the excitation lasers across the cold cloud and determine the number of Rydberg excitations detected as a function of position. Comparing this distribution to the one obtained for the number of ions created by a two…
We show that microwave spectroscopy of a dense Rydberg gas trapped on a superconducting atom chip in the dipole blockade regime reveals directly the dipole-dipole many-body interaction energy spectrum. We use this method to investigate the expansion of the Rydberg cloud under the effect of repulsive van der Waals forces and the breakdown of the frozen gas approximation. This study opens a promising route for quantum simulation of many-body systems and quantum information transport in chains of strongly interacting Rydberg atoms.
We study the quantum melting of quasi-one-dimensional lattice models in which the dominant energy scale is given by a repulsive dipolar interaction. By constructing an effective low-energy theory, we show that the melting of crystalline phases can occur into two distinct liquid phases, having the same algebraic decay of density-density correlations, but showing a different non-local correlation function expressing string order. We present possible experimental realizations using ultracold atoms and molecules, introducing an implementation based on resonantly driven Rydberg atoms that offers ad…
An array of single Rydberg atoms driven by a frequency modulated light field is studied. The periodic modulation effectively modifies the Rabi coupling, leading to unprecedented dynamics in the presence of Rydberg-Rydberg interactions. They include state dependent population trapping, the Rydberg blockade for small and anti-blockades at large interaction strengths. Interestingly, the Schrieffer-wolf transformation reveals a fundamental process in Rydberg gases, correlated Rabi oscillations, arising from the long-range interactions, provides an alternative depiction for Rydberg blockade and it …
Lee-Yang (LY) zeros play a fundamental role in the formulation of statistical physics in terms of (grand) partition functions, and assume theoretical significance for the phenomenon of phase transitions. In this paper, motivated by recent progress in cold Rydberg atom experiments, we explore the LY zeros in classical Rydberg blockade models. We find that the distribution of zeros of partition functions for these models in one dimension (1d) can be obtained analytically. We prove that all the LY zeros are real and negative for such models with arbitrary blockade radii. Therefore, no phase trans…
