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Physical Review A

Many-body wave function in a dipole blockade configuration

F. Robicheaux, J. V. Hernández

Published Dec 2, 2005• 100 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report the results of simulations of the many atom wave function when a cold gas is excited to highly excited states. We simulated the many body wave function by direct numerical solution of Schr\"odinger's equation. We investigated the fraction of atoms excited and the correlation of excited atoms in the gas for different types of excitation when the blockade region was small compared to the sample size. We also investigated the blockade effect when the blockade region is comparable to the sample size to determine the sensitivity of this system and constraints for quantum information.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.72.063403

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We report the results of simulations of the many atom wave function when a cold gas is excited to highly excited states. We simulated the many body wave function by direct numerical solution of Schr"odinger's equation. We investigated the fraction of atoms excited and the correlation of excited atoms in the gas for different types of excitation when the blockade region was small compared to the sample size. We also investigated the blockade effect when the blockade region is comparable to the sample size to determine the sensitivity of this system and constraints for quantum information.
We investigate the excitation of a collection of cold atoms to Rydberg states. By a direct numerical solution of Schrödinger's equation, we are able to compute various interesting properties of the many-body wavefunction. The high polarizability of Rydberg atoms allows them to support large dipole moments which in turn can interact with each other over long ranges. If the interaction energy between excited atoms is large enough, the resultant energy shift will move the two excitation states out of resonance, thus effectively blocking a two excitation state from occurring. One particular topic investigated is the quantum phase gate, where both groups of atoms are within a blockade radius R b and subjected to a π − 2π − π sequence of pulses. We examine the regime where the groups are neither totally within nor totally outside the blockade radius. Our results explore the tolerance in variation of intergroup lattice distances for a series of quantum gates.
We review here the studies performed about interactions in an assembly of cold Rydberg atoms. We focus especially on the review of the dipole–dipole interactions and on the effect of the dipole blockade in the laser Rydberg excitation, which offers attractive possibilities for quantum engineering. We present first the various interactions between Rydberg atoms. The laser Rydberg excitation of such an assembly is then described with the introduction of the dipole blockade phenomenon. We report recent experiments performed in this subject by starting with the case of a pair of atoms allowing the entanglement of the wave-functions of the atoms and opening a fascinating way for the realization of quantum bits and quantum gates. We consider then several works on the blockade effect in a large assembly of atoms for three different configurations: blockade through electric-field induced dipole, through Förster resonance, and in van der Waals interaction. The properties of coherence and cooperativity are analyzed. Finally, we treat the role of dipole–dipole interactions between Rydberg atoms responsible for Penning ionization. The perturbation of the dipole blockade by ions and the evolution of the Rydberg towards an ultracold plasma are discussed.
We present a method to model the interaction and the dynamics of atoms excited to Rydberg states. We show a way to solve the optical Bloch equations for laser excitation of the frozen gas in good agreement with the experiment. A second method, the kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) method, gives an exact solution of rate equations. Using a simple N -body integrator (Verlet), we are able to describe dynamic processes in space and time. Unlike more sophisticated methods, the KMC simulation offers the possibility of numerically following the evolution of tens of thousands of atoms within a reasonable computation time. The KMC simulation gives good agreement with dipole-blockade type of experiment. The role of ions and the individual particle effects are investigated.
The dipole blockade of Rydberg excitations is a hallmark of the strong interactions between atoms in these high-lying quantum states [M. Saffman, T. G. Walker, and K. Mølmer, Rev. Mod. Phys. 82, 2313 (2010); D. Comparat and P. Pillet, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 27, A208 (2010)]. One of the consequences of the dipole blockade is the suppression of fluctuations in the counting statistics of Rydberg excitations, of which some evidence has been found in previous experiments. Here we present experimental results on the dynamics and the counting statistics of Rydberg excitations of ultracold rubidium atoms both on and off resonance, which exhibit sub- and super-Poissonian counting statistics, respectively. We compare our results with numerical simulations using a novel theoretical model based on Dicke states of Rydberg atoms including dipole-dipole interactions, finding good agreement between experiment and theory.
We investigate the excitation of a collection of cold atoms to Rydberg states. By a direct numerical solution of Schr¨ odinger’s equation, we are able to compute various interesting properties of the many-body wavefunction. The high polarizability of Rydberg atoms allows them to support large dipole moments which in turn can interact with each other over long ranges. If the interaction energy between excited atoms is large enough, the resultant energy shift will move the two excitation states out of resonance, thus effectively blocking a two excitation state from occurring. One particular topic investigated is the quantum phase gate, where both groups of atoms are within a blockade radius Rb and subjected to a π − 2π − π sequence of pulses. We examine the regime where the groups are neither totally within nor totally outside the blockade radius. Our results explore the tolerance in variation of intergroup lattice distances for a series of quantum gates.
We report on simulations involving the blockade effect on a dense ultracold gas. The blockade effect is seen when the interaction energy between two excited Rydberg atoms is large enough to shift the two-excitation state out of resonance. In this paper we investigate a system that exhibits a strong van der Waals blockade, where only one out of thousands of atoms can be excited per blockade volume. With such a high number of atoms blockaded, the collective oscillation rate of an ensemble of atoms is much faster than the single atom oscillation rate. We examine the effects of this high density and the effects of a non-uniform density distribution as commonly seen in a magneto-optical trap (MOT). We use three different models and compare them to recent experimental data. The agreement between theory and experiment, although qualitative, suggests that the non-uniformity of the density within a blockade region presents a new challenge to theoretical models.