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arXiv:1907.13404 · Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Deterministic facilitated excitation of the weakly driven atom in heteronuclear Rydberg atom pairs beyond antiblockade

Han Wang, Dongmin Yu, Rui Li, Ning Jia, Jing Qian

Published Aug 20, 2019• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Due to the intrinsic strong blockaded interaction shifting the energy level of the Rydberg state, the steady Rydberg probability may be substantially restrained to a low level, especially for atoms suffering from weak driving. We report an exotic excitation facilitation using strong blockaded energy shifting the double excitation state, leading to the weakly driven atom deterministically excited by a significantly improved fraction even at far off-resonant regimes. This phenomenon is attributed to the effective induction of a reduced detuning to the weakly driven atom by optimizing parameters of an auxiliary strongly driven atom, arising from a modified large probability preserved for a broadening range of detuning. The influence from breaking the blockade condition on the excitation probability is also discussed. In contrast to previous approaches, our excitation facilitation mechanism does not rely on the antiblockade effect to the compensation of Rydberg energy, serving as a fresh way to a deterministic single-atom excitation of the target atom in a pair of heteronuclear Rydberg atoms, where a strong interatomic interaction is required.

DOI
10.1364/josab.36.002545

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Due to the intrinsic strong blockaded interaction shifting the energy level of the Rydberg state, the steady Rydberg probability may be substantially restrained to a low level, especially for atoms suffering from weak driving. We report an exotic excitation facilitation using strong blockaded energy shifting the double excitation state, leading to the weakly driven atom deterministically excited by a significantly improved fraction even at far off-resonant regimes. This phenomenon is attributed to the effective induction of a reduced detuning to the weakly driven atom by optimizing parameters of an auxiliary strongly driven atom, arising from a modified large probability preserved for a broadening range of detuning. The influence from breaking the blockade condition on the excitation probability is also discussed. In contrast to previous approaches, our excitation facilitation mechanism does not rely on the antiblockade effect to the compensation of Rydberg energy, serving as a fresh way to a deterministic single-atom excitation of the target atom in a pair of heteronuclear Rydberg atoms, where a strong interatomic interaction is required.
When atomic gases are laser driven to Rydberg states in an off-resonant way, a single Rydberg atom may enhance the excitation rate of surrounding atoms. This leads to a facilitated excitation referred to as Rydberg antiblockade. In the usual facilitation scenario, the detuning of the laser from resonance compensates the interaction shift. Here, we discuss a different excitation mechanism, which we call anomalous facilitation. This occurs on the ``wrong side'' of the resonance and originates from inhomogeneous broadening. The anomalous facilitation may be seen in experiments of attractively interacting atoms on the blue detuned side, where facilitation is not expected to appear.
Abstract We present distinct antiblockade features of strongly interacting 64D 5/2 Rydberg atoms employing a two-color excitation scheme. The first color (pulse A) is set to resonantly excite a few seed Rydberg atoms, each of which establishes a blockade region due to the long-range multipole interactions. The second color (pulse B) is blue detuned so that the multipole-interaction-induced shifts of certain atoms are well compensated to result in the antiblockade effect. We find in particular that a few seed atoms can lead to a remarkable difference of the Rydberg excitation in the presence of pulse B for a wide range of blue detuning. Relevant dynamics of this antiblockade excitation is also investigated by varying the pulse-B duration for a fixed blue detuning, further confirming the facilitation process of Rydberg excitation accompanied by a saturation effect. These experimental results can be well recovered by theoretical simulations based on a multilevel two-body model.
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 interaction and dynamics of off-resonant two-photon excitations and include two- and three-atom Rydberg interactions and their effect on excited state dynamics in an ensemble of cold atoms. In an experimentally-motivated regime, we find the optimal physical parameters such as Rabi frequencies, two-photon detuning, and pump duration to achieve significant enhancement in the probability of generating doubly-excited collective atomic states. This results in large auto-correlation values due to the Rydberg anti-blockade effect and makes this system a potential candidate for a high-purity two-photon Fock state source.
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 atom, 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 Rydberg atoms interacting via dipole-dipole exchange interactions. We study typical situations in current Rydberg atom experiments, where different types of dipole-dipole interactions can be achieved by varying Rydberg state couplings. An effective Hamiltonian governing underlying antiblockade dynamics is derived. We illustrate that geometric gates can be realized with the Rydberg antiblockade which is robust against the decay of Rydberg states. Our study may stimulate new experimental and theoretical exploration of quantum optics and strongly interacting many-body dynamics with Rydberg antiblockade driven by dipole-dipole interactions.
In an ensemble of laser-driven atoms involving strongly interacting Rydberg states, the steady-state excitation probability is usually substantially suppressed. In contrast, here we identify a regime in which the Rydberg excited fraction is enhanced by the interaction. This effect is associated with the buildup of many-body coherences induced by coherent multiphoton excitations between collective states. The excitation enhancement should be observable under currently existing experimental conditions and may serve as a direct probe for the presence of coherent multiphoton dynamics involving collective quantum states.
We demonstrate the coherent excitation of a mesoscopic ensemble of about 100 ultracold atoms to Rydberg states by driving Rabi oscillations from the atomic ground state. We employ a dedicated beam shaping and optical pumping scheme to compensate for the small transition matrix element. We study the excitation in a weakly interacting regime and in the regime of strong interactions. When increasing the interaction strength by pair state resonances, we observe an increased excitation rate through coupling to high angular momentum states. This effect is in contrast to the proposed and previously observed interaction-induced suppression of excitation, the so-called dipole blockade.