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arXiv:2408.02324 · Optics Letters

Generation of 480 nm picosecond pulses for ultrafast excitation of Rydberg atoms

Tirumalasetty Panduranga Mahesh, Takuya Matsubara, Yuki Torii Chew, Takafumi Tomita, Sylvain de Léséleuc, Kenji Ohmori

Published Nov 26, 2024• 5 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Atoms in Rydberg states are an important building block for emerging quantum technologies. While excitation to Rydberg orbitals is typically achieved in more than tens of nanoseconds, the physical limit is in fact much faster, at the ten picoseconds level. Here, we tackle such ultrafast Rydberg excitation of a rubidium atom by designing a dedicated pulsed laser system generating 480 nm pulses of 10 ps duration. In particular, we improved upon our previous design by using an injection-seeded optical parametric amplifier (OPA) to obtain a stable pulsed energy, decreasing the fluctuation from 30 to 6%. We then succeeded in ultrafast excitation of Rydberg atoms with excitation probability of ∼90%, not limited anymore by energy fluctuation but rather by the atomic state preparation, addressable in future works. This achievement broadens the range of applications of Rydberg atoms.

DOI
10.1364/ol.538707

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Atoms in Rydberg states are an important building block for emerging quantum technologies. While excitation to Rydberg orbitals is typically achieved in more than tens of nanoseconds, the physical limit is in fact much faster, at the ten picoseconds level. Here, we tackle such ultrafast Rydberg excitation of a rubidium atom by designing a dedicated pulsed laser system generating 480 nm pulses of 10 ps duration. In particular, we improved upon our previous design by using an injection-seeded optical parametric amplifier (OPA) to obtain a stable pulsed energy, decreasing the fluctuation from 30 to 6%. We then succeeded in ultrafast excitation of Rydberg atoms with excitation probability of ∼90%, not limited anymore by energy fluctuation but rather by the atomic state preparation, addressable in future works. This achievement broadens the range of applications of Rydberg atoms.
A compact, high-power, and stable blue laser source is essential for Rydberg state excitation of rubidium (Rb) atoms, particularly for emerging Rydberg atom-based sensors that require portability for practical applications. In this work, we present an injection-locked laser system using blue laser diodes for both the leader and follower lasers near 480 nm, enabling efficient Rydberg state preparation of Rb and eliminating the need for nonlinear frequency-doubling. The locked follower laser delivers 263 mW of output power with a linewidth of 591(31) kHz after frequency stabilization. High-efficiency spatial mode matching between the seed light and follower laser is accomplished through a polarization-maintaining fiber, resulting in a power gain of 30.4 dB. The compact optical path design allows the laser system to occupy just 20 × 21 × 4 cm 3 . Such a high-power and compact injection-locked blue laser system provides a low-cost and efficient solution for Rydberg atom-based applications.
In recent years, the growing scale of programmable neutral-atom arrays has led to an increasing demand for higher-power Rydberg excitation light. Although pulsed amplifiers deliver higher peak power than continuous-wave lasers, their use for efficient coherent Rydberg excitation of single atoms in arrays has been limited by challenges such as pulse distortion, synchronization with excitation sequences, and spectral linewidth broadening. Here, we address these issues using a fiber-based master-oscillator power-amplifier system. We demonstrate efficient coherent Rydberg excitation of single atoms in a rubidium atom array, achieving performance comparable to continuous-wave methods. This study provides a potentially new technical pathway toward future large-scale quantum simulation and computation with Rydberg atom arrays.
Single photon source is a non-classical light field with anti-bunching effect, which has a potential applications in the research of fundamental physics problems, quantum precision measurement, quantum communication, quantum computing, etc. The strong interaction between highly excited Rydberg atoms presents an excitation blockade effect. In a dense Rydberg atomic ensemble, the excitation of more than one Rydberg atom within a blockade volume is suppressed, where the interactions of Rydberg atoms shift the atomic states out of resonance with an excitation laser. We consider here the generation of single photon source by using a four-wave mixing scheme in a room-temperature atomic vapor cell. In a homemade micrometer-sized atomic vapor cell, one-dimensional size is smaller than the radius of Rydberg blockade and the other two-dimensional size is limited by the size of focused laser beam. The blockade radius is on the order of a few micrometers, depending on the Rydberg atom states. An excitation blockade effect can be used to realize single photon source in thermal cesium vapor microcells. The micron cesium-cell is used to spatially localize atomic groups, which results in the atomic decoherence time on the order of microseconds or even nanoseconds. This requires a high-power pulsed laser to prepare the Rydberg atomic state at a nanosecond scale. Four-photon excitation schemes with narrow linewidth lasers are also used experimentally. The cesium-Rydberg state can usually be excited by the lasers with optical wavelengths 852 and 509 nm, respectively. The laser system is well-stabilized so that the detuning is small compared with the spontaneous linewidth of Rydberg state, while the laser power and temporal mode need to be specified for ns-time coherence in thermal cesium vapor microcells. The 852 nm laser can be achieved by modulating the continuous laser beam with the help of an electro-optic intensity modulator (EOIM). While this remains a technical challenge for 509 nm laser with ns-laser pulse. There is no EOIM to generate the ns-laser pulse with high power. We demonstrate a novel generation method of 509 nm laser system. In our experiments, a 1018 nm fiber laser is used to produce a continuous laser with a typical linewidth of ～8 kHz and power of 10 mW. The nanosecond pulse is generated with the help of an electro-optic intensity modulator (EOIM) by modifying the continuous laser beam. The peak power of modulated optical pulse is amplified to 4600 W by using a homemade fiber amplifier. The output beam of 1018 nm is then injected into a periodically poled lithium-niobate (PPLN) to generate the second harmonics laser of 509 nm. The typical peak power of 509 nm reaches 173 W by optimizing PPLN phase matching parameters. The pulse repetition frequency of the 509 nm laser can be continuously tuned in a range of 300 kHz–100 MHz, and the pulse width can be continuously tuned in a range of 1–100 ns. Peak power fluctuation of the pulses is about 1.3%. The power 509 nm laser with optimized pulse parameters can be used to excite the cesium atom with GHz bandwidth. Meanwhile the two seed source lasers is well established experimentally, which allows alternating pulses with a different wavelength. This is an essential capability for realizing a single photon source through four-wave mixing.