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arXiv:2010.12111 · Physical Review A

Interaction-enhanced transmission imaging with Rydberg atoms

Xiaoguang Huo, J. F. Chen, Jing Qian, Weiping Zhang

Published Jan 24, 2022• 3 citations
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Abstract

Atomic-scale imaging offers a reliable tool to directly measure the movement of microscopic particles. We present a scheme for achieving a nondestructive and ultrasensitive imaging of Rydberg atoms within an ensemble of cold probe atoms. This is made possible by the interaction-enhanced electromagnetically induced transparency at off resonance which enables an extremely narrow absorption dip for an enhanced transmission. Through the transmission of a probe beam, we obtain the distribution of Rydberg atoms with both high spatial resolution and fast response, which ensures a more precise real-time imaging. Increased resolution compared to the prior interaction-enhanced imaging technique allows us to accurately locate the atoms by adjusting the probe detuning only. This type of interaction-enhanced transmission imaging can be utilized in other impure systems containing strong many-body interactions, and is promising to develop superresolution microscopy of cold atoms.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.105.012817

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Atomic-scale imaging offers a reliable tool to directly measure the movement of microscopic particles. We present a scheme for achieving a nondestructive and ultrasensitive imaging of Rydberg atoms within an ensemble of cold probe atoms. This is made possible by the interaction-enhanced electromagnetically induced transparency at off resonance which enables an extremely narrow absorption dip for an enhanced transmission. Through the transmission of a probe beam, we obtain the distribution of Rydberg atoms with both high spatial resolution and fast response, which ensures a more precise real-time imaging. Increased resolution compared to the prior interaction-enhanced imaging technique allows us to accurately locate the atoms by adjusting the probe detuning only. This type of interaction-enhanced transmission imaging can be utilized in other impure systems containing strong many-body interactions, and is promising to develop superresolution microscopy of cold atoms.
We present a scheme for the nondestructive and ultra-sensitive imaging of Rydberg atoms within an ensemble of cold probe atoms. This is made possible by the interaction-enhanced electromagnetically induced transparency at off-resonance which enables an extremely narrow zero-absorption window for an enhanced 100%\%% transmission. By probing the transmission rate we obtain the distribution of Rydberg atoms with both ultra-high spatial resolution and fast response, ensuring a precise real-time imaging. Increased resolution compared to previous work allows us to accurately obtain the information of atom position at the nanometer scale via adjusting the probe detuning only. This new type of interaction enhanced transmission imaging can be utilized to other impure systems containing strong many-body interactions, and is promising to develop nanoscale super-resolution microscopy.
We propose a new all-optical method to image individual Rydberg atoms embedded within dense gases of ground state atoms. The scheme exploits interaction-induced shifts on highly polarizable excited states of probe atoms, which can be spatially resolved via an electromagnetically induced transparency resonance. Using a realistic model, we show that it is possible to image individual Rydberg atoms with enhanced sensitivity and high resolution despite photon-shot noise and atomic density fluctuations. This new imaging scheme could be extended to other impurities such as ions, and is ideally suited to equilibrium and dynamical studies of complex many-body phenomena involving strongly interacting particles. As an example we study blockade effects and correlations in the distribution of Rydberg atoms optically excited from a dense gas.
This thesis investigates how a single highly excited atom, called Rydberg atom, can be optically imaged. Direct detection methods based on the scattering of light are hardly applicable due to the small scattering rate of the ground to Rydberg state transition. Instead, a cloud of ground state atoms, normally absorptive, is rendered transparent using electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), involving an auxiliary probe Rydberg state. The cloud acts as a contrast medium, whose optical response is locally perturbed by the strong Rydberg-Rydberg interaction between the probe and the Rydberg impurity which we want to detect. This perturbation restores absorption within a small volume around the impurity, readily detected and \nspatially resolved on a camera. We call this technique Interaction Enhanced Imaging (IEI). To implement IEI we characterize the optical response of the EIT contrast \nmedium in absence of interactions. By combining measurements of the spatially resolved optical spectrum and of the total Rydberg atom number, we can reconstruct \nthe full one-body density matrix of the three-level system. Next, we excite |nS> or |nP> states and, using IEI, we demonstrate spatially resolved imaging, enabling us \nto study dipolar energy transport. To reach single impurity sensitivity we investigate our current detection fidelity and characterize the signal and noise contributions in \nIEI. We model our interacting system, finding good agreement with experimental data. Based on this model, we predict combinations of Rydberg states for which single-shot single impurity sensitivity should be possible in future experiments.
This thesis investigates new phenomena that arise when light is strongly coupled to an interacting atomic gas. For this, a new apparatus has been built which allows to create ultracold and dense atomic samples and to detect individual atoms in high-lying atomic states, so-called Rydberg atoms. Strong light-matter coupling is achieved using the collective coupling of the atomic cloud to the light field under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). In experiments on EIT involving non-interacting Rydberg states, we characterize the light-matter coupling and demonstrate the first combined optical and matter based probing of EIT. By coupling to strongly-interacting Rydberg states, we investigate the effect of interactions which we observe as a strong nonlinear optical \nresponse of the atomic gas as well as in the emergence of strong correlations between the hybrid quasiparticles associated with the strong light-matter coupling. We employ the nonlinear response of the atomic cloud to image Rydberg atoms immersed in the atomic cloud. In a theoretical proposal, we show that this novel imaging technique allows to investigate many-body Rydberg states with single particle sensitivity. Using the proposed imaging method, we demonstrate imaging of small numbers of Rydberg atoms with high time-resolution in single shot experiments. In experiments exploiting the dipolar exchange interaction between Rydberg atoms, we employ the new imaging technique to follow dipole-mediated transport of Rydberg excitations through the cloud. The transport dynamics is determined by the continuous spatial projection of the electronic quantum state under observation and features an emergent spatial scale of micrometer size induced by Rydberg-Rydberg interactions.
We demonstrate imaging of ions in an atomic gas with ion-Rydberg-atom interaction induced absorption. This is made possible by utilizing a multiphoton electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) scheme and the extremely large electric polarizability of a Rydberg state with high orbital angular momentum. We process the acquired images to obtain the distribution of ion clouds and to spectroscopically investigate the effect of the ions on the EIT resonance. Furthermore, we show that our method can be employed to image the dynamics of ions in a time resolved way. As an example, we map out the avalanche ionization of a gas of Rydberg atoms. The minimal disruption and the flexibility offered by this imaging technique make it ideally suited for the investigation of cold hybrid ion-atom systems.
Rydberg atoms are currently a very fast-advancing quantum platform. For many interesting and demanding applications, including quantum computation, fast detection of a Rydberg excitation or a Rydberg qubit for information readout would be one of the most desirable developments. We demonstrate single-shot and in situ absorption imaging of individual Rydberg excitations. This level of resolution is achieved using an electromagnetically induced transparency scheme involving a Rydberg energy level that is highly sensitive to the presence of Rydberg atoms due to Förster-resonance-enhanced dipole couplings. Spectroscopic measurements illustrate the existence of the Förster resonance and underscore the state-selectivity of the technique. With an imaging exposure time as short as 3 µs, we successfully resolve linear chains of Rydberg excitations in a one-dimensional configuration. The extracted second-order correlation shows strong anti-bunching due to excitation blockade, and a Fourier analysis reveals the long-range order in the chains of Rydberg excitations. This imaging technique, with minimal destruction, will be of great interest for leveraging ensemble-encoded qubits in quantum computation and quantum simulation applications.