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arXiv:1603.05924 · Physical Review A

Rydberg polaritons in a thermal vapor

Fabian Ripka, Yi‐Hsin Chen, Robert Löw, Tilman Pfau

Published May 31, 2016• 29 citations
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Abstract

We present a pulsed four-wave mixing 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 $220\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{m}$-thick cell, which is heated above room temperature. The experimental sequence consists of a pulsed excitation of Rydberg polaritons via the ${D}_{1}$ line, a variable delay or storage time, and a final retrieval pulse via the ${D}_{2}$ 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. The presented scheme combined with a tightly confined atomic ensemble is a good candidate for a deterministic single-photon source, as soon as strong interactions in terms of a Rydberg blockade are added.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.93.053429

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Signal revivals in pulsed Rydberg four-wave mixing in thermal ensembles

Yi‐Hsin Chen, Fabian Ripka, Robert Löw +1 more

We present resonant four-wave mixing (FWM) signals involving a Rydberg state in a thermal Rb vapor. The dynamic behavior of the FWM signals exhibits revival peaks shortly after the incident pulse, which are due to coherent collective emission among all Doppler classes. The FWM signals have dephasing times up to 7 ns, and strongly depend on the excitation bandwidth to the Rydberg state. Our numerical simulations based on a four-level model including the whole Doppler broadened ensemble can describe the data quite well.

Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE•Mar 7, 2016•0 citations
We present a pulsed four-wave mixing 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\ensuremath−\ensuremathμm220\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{m}220\ensuremath−\ensuremathμm-thick cell, which is heated above room temperature. The experimental sequence consists of a pulsed excitation of Rydberg polaritons via the D1{D}_{1}D1​ line, a variable delay or storage time, and a final retrieval pulse via the D2{D}_{2}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. The presented scheme combined with a tightly confined atomic ensemble is a good candidate for a deterministic single-photon source, as soon as strong interactions in terms of a Rydberg blockade are added.
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 timescales. Combined with a 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 (Huber et al. in Phys Rev A 90: 053806, 2014) using off-resonant FWM, at a resonant FWM scheme we observe additional revivals of the signal shortly after the incident pulse has ended. We infer that this is a revival of motion-induced constructive interference between the coherent emissions of the thermal atoms. The resonant FWM scheme reveals a richer temporal structure of the signals, compared to similar, but off-resonant excitation schemes. A simple explanation lies in the selectivity of Doppler classes. Our numerical simulations based on a four-level model including a whole Doppler ensemble can qualitatively describe the data.
We present an optimal protocol to implement a room-temperature Rydberg single-photon source within an experimental setup based on micro cells filled with thermal vapor. The optimization of a pulsed four wave mixing scheme allows us to double the effective Rydberg blockade radius as compared to a simple Gaussian pulse scheme, releasing some of the constraints on the geometry of the micro cells. The performance of the optimized protocol is improved by about 70% with respect to the standard protocol.
The combination of electromagnetically induced transparency with the nonlinear interaction between Rydberg atoms provides an effective interaction between photons. In this Letter, 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 storage times, we observe a strong enhancement of the interaction due to the reduction of the Rydberg polariton group velocity down to 0. For longer storage times, we observe a further, weaker enhancement dominated by Rydberg induced dephasing of the multiparticle components of the state. In this regime, we observe a nonlinear dependence of the Rydberg polariton coherence time with the input photon number. Our results have direct consequences in Rydberg quantum optics and may enable the test of new theories of strongly interacting Rydberg systems.
The combination of electromagnetically induced transparency with the nonlinear interaction between Rydberg atoms provides an effective interaction between photons. In this Letter, 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 storage times, we observe a strong enhancement of the interaction due to the reduction of the Rydberg polariton group velocity down to 0. For longer storage times, we observe a further, weaker enhancement dominated by Rydberg induced dephasing of the multiparticle components of the state. In this regime, we observe a nonlinear dependence of the Rydberg polariton coherence time with the input photon number. Our results have direct consequences in Rydberg quantum optics and may enable the test of new theories of strongly interacting Rydberg systems.
Photonic quantum devices based on atomic vapors at room temperature combine the advantages of atomic vapors being intrinsically reproducable as well as semiconductor-based concepts being scalable and integrable. One key device in the field of quantum information are on-demand single-photon sources. Comparable to similar realizations using cold atoms [1], it has been supposed to realize room-temperature single-photon sources by combining the two effects of four-wave mixing and Rydberg blockade [2]. Driving the four-wave mixing cycles in a pulsed manner, single photons are generated on demand. The essential conditions of coherence [3,4] and sufficient Rydberg-Rydberg interaction strengths [5] have already been demonstrated. Up to now, the third condition has been missing: That is performing the excitation cycles in a low-dimensional geometry in order to obtain an excitation blockade of the whole volume by only one Rydberg excitation. We realize this spatial confinement in transversal direction by focusing one of the excitation beams by means of a high-NA lens, and in longitudinal direction by using vapor cells of about one micrometer inner thickness (“µ-cells”). In order to deal with reasonable numbers of atoms in such a small volume, we exploit the fact that in thermal equilibrium there are large numbers of adsorbed atoms on the glass surface. We can easily photo-desorb them shortly before the four-wave mixing cycles and increase by this the optical thickness in the excitation volume by one order of magnitude. By means of these techniques we are now able to generate single photons at 780nm. With a Rydberg blockade radius of 1.0µm and a cell thickness of 1.2µm, we observe pure anti-bunching in the light statistics of the coherent emission field, deviating with a significance of three standard deviations from Poisson-type statistics. We obtain generation efficiencies of currently up to 5% per four-wave mixing cycle, depending on experimental parameters. We systematically investigate the disappearance of the anti-bunching by increasing the cell thickness. The results are also compared to measurements at smaller blockade radii. This technique can be further improved by investigating different Rydberg states or different multi-level schemes which allow exploiting the latest developments in laser research. [1] Y. O. Dudin et al., Science 336, 6083 (2012) [2] M. M. Müller et al., PRA 87, 053412 (2013) [3] B. Huber et al., PRL 107, 243001 (2011) [4] B. Huber et al., PRA 90, 053806 (2014) [5] T. Baluktsian et al., PRL 110, 123001 (2013)
We present resonant four-wave mixing (FWM) signals involving a Rydberg state in a thermal Rb vapor. The dynamic behavior of the FWM signals exhibits revival peaks shortly after the incident pulse, which are due to coherent collective emission among all Doppler classes. The FWM signals have dephasing times up to 7 ns, and strongly depend on the excitation bandwidth to the Rydberg state. Our numerical simulations based on a four-level model including the whole Doppler broadened ensemble can describe the data quite well.