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arXiv:1607.02203 · Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Resonance-enhanced collective effect in a triangle arrangement of Rydberg atoms with anisotropic interactions

Jing Qian

Published Jul 22, 2016• 6 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

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 several special resonance cases. For that fact, we observe the collectively enhanced excitation probability of a 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 for this collective excitation enhancement, we study the two-body quantum correlation between three Rydberg atoms, as well as the dependence of the blockade radius on the length of triangle sides, which present a good agreement with the excitation properties.

DOI
10.1364/josab.33.001749

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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 several special resonance cases. For that fact, we observe the collectively enhanced excitation probability of a 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 for this collective excitation enhancement, we study the two-body quantum correlation between three Rydberg atoms, as well as the dependence of the blockade radius on the length of triangle sides, which present a good agreement with the excitation properties.
We study the Rydberg blockade in a system of three atoms arranged in different two-dimensional geometries (linear and triangular configurations). In the strong blockade regime, we observe high-contrast, coherent collective oscillations of the single excitation probability and an almost perfect van der Waals blockade. Our data are consistent with a total population in doubly and triply excited states below 2%. In the partial blockade regime, we directly observe the anisotropy of the van der Waals interactions between |nD> Rydberg states in the triangular configuration. A simple model that only uses independently measured two-body van der Waals interactions fully reproduces the dynamics of the system without any adjustable parameter. These results are extremely promising for scalable quantum information processing and quantum simulation with neutral atoms.
Abstract We present a theoretical scheme to realize the highly entangled W state in the neutral atomic system by using the Rydberg blockade effect. Considering three neutral atoms trapped in an optical lattice with an equilateral triangle geometric configuration, we show that only one atom can be excited to the Rydberg excite state due to the Rydberg blockade effect. By choosing a non-zero detuning from the exact two-photon resonance in order to compensate for the blockade error caused by the finite interaction energy, we show that the three atoms W state can be generated. Moreover, we show that three atoms are entangled when W state is achieved with high fidelity.
Abstract 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 have investigated the spectra of the three-photon laser excitation 5S1/2 → 5P3/2 → 6S1/2 → nP3/2 of cold Rydberg Rb atoms in a magneto-optical trap. We have found that for mesoscopic ensembles this method allows only a partial dipole blockage to be observed. This is most likely related to the presence of parasitic electric fields reducing the interaction energy of Rydberg atoms, the decrease in the probability of detecting high states, and the strong angular dependence of the interaction energy of Rydberg atoms in a single interaction volume.
Owing to the unique physical characteristics of Rydberg atoms, which play an important role in quantum information and quantum computation, the theoretical and applied research of Rydberg atoms have become the hot spots of scientific research in recent years. With the large polarizability of Rydberg atoms, even a small electric field could cause a considerable electric dipole moment, resulting in a strong dipole-dipole interaction between Rydberg atoms. The multiple excitations of the Rydberg states are strongly inhibited because of the strong dipole interaction between atoms within a mesoscopic interaction (blockade) region. We call this phenomenon the dipole blockade effect. The dipole blockade effect makes it possible to build single-photon quantum devices, implement quantum gates, generate quantum entanglement, and simulate many-body quantum problems, etc. A Rydberg atomic ensemble in the same blockade region can be regarded as a superatom. In the same way, if these atoms trapped in two optical dipole traps, each sub-ensemble can be considered as a sub-superatom which is closely related to the superatom. According to the fact that two Rydberg sub-superatoms can be strongly correlated due to sharing no more than one excited Rydberg atom, we study correlated collective excitation and quantum entanglement between two Rydberg sub-superatoms in a steady state. With the superatom model, the problem of exponentially increasing system size with the number of atoms can be circumvented to a certain extent in studying many-body physics. By solving the two-body Lindblad’s master equation accurately, we obtain the analytical expressions for the collective excitation probabilities of the two sub-superatoms, and the concurrence measuring the bipartite entanglement between them. Our results show that they are all sensitive to the number of atoms in each Rydberg superatom: the bigger (including more atoms) the Rydberg superatom, the higher the collective Rydberg excitation probability is. And that the maximally entangled state can only be obtained with two equal-sized Rydberg superatoms. When this condition is fulfilled, the mesoscopic entanglement can be generated by adding the number of atoms in each Rydberg superatom. This may provide an attractive platform for studying the quantum-classical correspondence and have potential promising applications in quantum information processing.
A dipole blockade, in which Rydberg-atom-Rydberg-atom interactions inhibit all but a single collective Rydberg excitation, has been proposed as a mechanism to store and manipulate quantum information in mesoscopic ensembles. We investigate the excitation dynamics of a collection of a few atoms and show that they undergo an unexpected, qualitative change when the number of atoms increases from two to three. In particular, the combined action of three atoms, each of which pairwise would produce a blockade, can break the dipole blockade.
We review here the studies performed about interactions in an assembly of cold Rydberg atoms. We focus especially on the review of the dipole–dipole interactions and on the effect of the dipole blockade in the laser Rydberg excitation, which offers attractive possibilities for quantum engineering. We present first the various interactions between Rydberg atoms. The laser Rydberg excitation of such an assembly is then described with the introduction of the dipole blockade phenomenon. We report recent experiments performed in this subject by starting with the case of a pair of atoms allowing the entanglement of the wave-functions of the atoms and opening a fascinating way for the realization of quantum bits and quantum gates. We consider then several works on the blockade effect in a large assembly of atoms for three different configurations: blockade through electric-field induced dipole, through Förster resonance, and in van der Waals interaction. The properties of coherence and cooperativity are analyzed. Finally, we treat the role of dipole–dipole interactions between Rydberg atoms responsible for Penning ionization. The perturbation of the dipole blockade by ions and the evolution of the Rydberg towards an ultracold plasma are discussed.