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arXiv:1901.11069

Stark spectroscopy of Rydberg atoms in an atom-ion hybrid trap

Shinsuke Haze, Joschka Wolf, Markus Deiß, Limei Wang, Georg A. Raithel, Johannes Hecker Denschlag

Published Jan 30, 2019• 9 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We report on Rydberg spectroscopy of ultracold atoms in an atom-ion hybrid trap for probing the electric fields in a mixture of atoms and ions. We obtain spectra which exhibit excitation gaps corresponding to avoided level crossings in the Stark map. From these measurements we can conclude that the ground state atoms experience electrical fields of up to 250 V/cm. There is, however, a difficulty in interpreting the results, because some data indicate that the electrical fields are produced by the ions while other data indicate that they stem from the Paul trap. We discuss possible scenarios for explaining the measured data, provide first measurements to check these scenarios, and propose methods to finally solve this puzzle.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1901.11069

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We report on Rydberg spectroscopy of ultracold atoms in an atom-ion hybrid trap for probing the electric fields in a mixture of atoms and ions. We obtain spectra which exhibit excitation gaps corresponding to avoided level crossings in the Stark map. From these measurements we can conclude that the ground state atoms experience electrical fields of up to 250 V/cm. There is, however, a difficulty in interpreting the results, because some data indicate that the electrical fields are produced by the ions while other data indicate that they stem from the Paul trap. We discuss possible scenarios for explaining the measured data, provide first measurements to check these scenarios, and propose methods to finally solve this puzzle.
We report on the observation of interactions between ultracold Rydberg atoms and ions in a Paul trap. The rate of observed inelastic collisions, which manifest themselves as charge transfer between the Rydberg atoms and ions, exceeds that of Langevin collisions for ground state atoms by about 3 orders of magnitude. This indicates a huge increase in interaction strength. We study the effect of the vacant Paul trap's electric fields on the Rydberg excitation spectra. To quantitatively describe the exhibited shape of the ion loss spectra, we need to include the ion-induced Stark shift on the Rydberg atoms. Furthermore, we demonstrate Rydberg excitation on a dipole-forbidden transition with the aid of the electric field of a single trapped ion. Our results confirm that interactions between ultracold atoms and trapped ions can be controlled by laser coupling to Rydberg states. Adding dynamic Rydberg dressing may allow for the creation of spin-spin interactions between atoms and ions, and the elimination of collisional heating due to ionic micromotion in atom-ion mixtures.
Trapped Rydberg ions are a promising new system for quantum information processing. They have the potential to join the precise quantum operations of trapped ions and the strong, long-range interactions between Rydberg atoms. Combining the two systems is not at all straightforward. Rydberg atoms are severely affected by electric fields which may cause Stark shifts and field ionization, while electric fields are used to trap ions. Thus, a thorough understanding of the physical properties of Rydberg ions due to the trapping electric fields is essential for future applications. Here we report the observation of two fundamental trap effects. First, we investigate the interaction of the Rydberg electron with the trapping electric quadrupole fields which leads to Floquet sidebands in the excitation spectra. Second, we report on the modified trapping potential in the Rydberg state compared to the ground state which results from the strong polarizability of the Rydberg ion. By controlling both effects we observe resonance lines close to their natural linewidth demonstrating an unprecedented level of control of this novel quantum platform.
Rydberg atoms, i.e. atoms with one or more highly excited electrons, show exaggerated properties compared to ground state atoms. For example, their energy levels are very sensitive to external electric fields (Stark effect) and they exhibit strong interatomic interactions, which can lead to a suppression of excitation known as the Rydberg blockade. The latter property makes Rydberg atoms promising candidates for quantum simulation and quantum computing. This work describes the direct observation of the excitation blockade for highly Stark-shifted Rydberg atoms induced by controllable dipole-dipole interactions. We investigate the electric field region around and above the classical ionization threshold, which is typically not considered suitable for blockade experiments. We excite Rydberg atoms in the energy region corresponding to the unperturbed 43S1/2 state at electric fields around 127V/cm out of a magneto-optically trapped cloud of 87Rb atoms with a temperature of 150 μK. We tune the dipole-dipole interaction by the applied electric field thus changing the electric dipole moment of the excited state. The position of the Rydberg atoms is detected by ionization and subsequent ion imaging; the controlled ionization of the atoms is achieved by adiabatic transfer of the Rydberg state to an ionizing state. For the spatially resolved detection of the atoms, a high resolution ion microscope for cold atoms has been developed and experimentally characterized. It features a maximum magnification of 1000 and sub-micrometer spatial resolution. A theoretical treatment of highly Stark-shifted Rydberg states is developed introducing a complex absorbing potential. It is capable of predicting the ionization rates of the Rydberg states for a wide range of electric fields and energies with only one free parameter. Together with the numerical calculations, measurements of the ionization spectra for different Rydberg states are presented. The 43S1/2 state is measured in an electric-field range from 125V/cm to 165V/cm (classical ionization limit 127V/cm), the 70S1/2 state in an electric-field range from 15V/cm to 35V/cm (classical ionization limit 16.1V/cm) and the 100S1/2 state in an electric-field range from 7V/cm to 19V/cm (classical ionization limit 3.7V/cm). Our results show an intricate energy level structure with broad, strongly ionizing states as well as sharp, nearly non-ionizing states. The numerical calculations are also used for the prediction of selective field ionization spectra and the results are used to identify Förster resonances in the Stark spectrum of the 45D5/2 state. Complementary to the spatially resolved measurements in high electric fields, the Rydberg blockade effect is also observed via the excitation number statistics at Förster resonances.
On one side, atom-chip experiments have demonstrated to be a versatile tool to study quantum physics in cold atoms systems. On the other side, Rydberg atoms have exaggerated properties that makes them good candidates to study quantum information and quantum simulations protocols. In this thesis both system are put together with the aim to study Rydberg physics (in particular atom-atom interaction) in an atom-chip experiment. Due to the exaggerated properties of Rydberg atoms they are very sensitive to electric fields. Thus, the combination of Rydberg atoms with surfaces can be challenging. Therefore a detailed characterization of the mentioned stray electric fields via the analysis of Stark-Zeeman maps is crucial. We employ two-photon Rydberg Stark spectroscopy of a micron-sized cloud of magnetically trapped ultracold rubidium atoms to characterize the electric fields near our atom-chip. Once we characterized the local electric fields we were able to study in more detail the effect of Rydberg excitation in the ultracold cloud of atoms. For instance we observed the formation of ultralong-range Rydberg molecules in our system. In these molecules a ground state atom is weakly bound to the Rydberg electron. We also attempted to observe the effect of Rydberg blockade in the system by looking at the characteristics of Rydberg spectra. Finally we studied the possibility of inducing rf transitions within a Rydberg state manifold in order to enhance our detection method and populate states that are not accessible directly with a two-photon laser transition.
We use the sensitive response to electric fields of Rydberg atoms to characterize all three vector components of the local electric field close to an atom-chip surface. We measured Stark-Zeeman maps of SSS and DDD Rydberg states using an elongated cloud of ultracold rubidium atoms (temperature $T\ensuremath{\sim}2.5\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{K}$) trapped magnetically $100\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{m}$ from the chip surface. The spectroscopy of SSS states yields a calibration for the generated local electric field at the position of the atoms. The values for different components of the field are extracted from the more complex response of DDD states to the combined electric and magnetic fields. From the analysis we find residual fields in the two uncompensated directions of $0.0\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.2$ and $1.98\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.09$ V/cm. This method also allows us to extract a value for the relevant field gradient along the long axis of the cloud. The manipulation of electric fields and the magnetic trapping are both done using on-chip wires, making this setup a promising candidate to observe Rydberg-mediated interactions on a chip.
Cold-atom-based ion sources (CABIS) are a timely example of how laser cooling and trapping can be used in practical applications, such as nanofabrication and microscopy. Unfortunately, Coulomb repulsion between ions can significantly deteriorate CABIS performance. The authors demonstrate that embedded Rydberg atoms can be used for noninvasive, near-real-time measurement of the electric fields between ions in CABIS, and thereby to control Coulomb-induced degradation via feedback. The spectra of different Rydberg states reveal which states are suitable for low- and high-field monitoring, and this work also sheds light on many-body interactions between ultracold ions and neutral atoms.