Coherent off-resonant excitation of an infinite series of bound states, not unlike an atomic Rydberg series, is shown to lead to suppression of mixing between the degenerate levels of the Rydberg state that is resonantly excited. The generation of high harmonics that accompanies the mixing is similarly suppressed.
Numerical integration of the Schr\"odinger equation for the resonant single-photon excitation from the 1s to 10p state in atomic hydrogen has been used to produce solutions converged to a precision of a few parts per million. At all intensities investigated (in the range 10−−100TW/cm2), the population in the states having angular momentum higher than l=1 after a narrowband (500 fs) laser pulse are found to be neglible. This shows that off-resonant states can effectively suppress Raman-like transitions to degenerate states of higher angular momentum. Instead of such mixing, strong Rabi-like oscillations between 1s and the np Rydberg series are observed.
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.
When optical frequency fields are used to couple a ground state to a Rydberg state, the resonant dipole coupling is to a low angular momentum state. Higher angular momentum states are typically thought not to play a role in the excitation. The extremely large dipole matrix elements coupling Rydberg states of the same n but differing l, however, allow optical fields of modest strengths to produce Rabi frequencies larger than optical frequencies. We demonstrate that these optical fields can therefore readily excite the higher angular momentum states, and we examine the consequences of this coupling.
We realize a coherent transfer between a laser-accessible low-angular-momentum Rydberg state and the circular Rydberg level with maximal angular momentum. It is induced by a radio frequency field with a high-purity σ^{+} polarization resonant on Stark transitions inside the hydrogenic Rydberg manifold. We observe over a few microseconds more than 20 coherent Rabi oscillations between the initial Rydberg state and the circular level. We characterize these many-Rydberg-level oscillations and find them in perfect agreement with a simple model. This coherent transfer opens the way to hybrid quantum gates bridging the gap between optical communication and quantum information manipulations with microwave cavity and circuit quantum electrodynamics.