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Science

Observing the Dynamics of Dipole-Mediated Energy Transport by Interaction-Enhanced Imaging

G. Günter, H. Schempp, Martin Robert-De-Saint-Vincent, Vladislav Gavryusev, S. Helmrich, C. S. Hofmann, S. Whitlock, Matthias Weidemüller

Published Nov 8, 2013• 209 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Electronically highly excited (Rydberg) atoms experience quantum state-changing interactions similar to Förster processes found in complex molecules, offering a model system to study the nature of dipole-mediated energy transport under the influence of a controlled environment. We demonstrate a nondestructive imaging method to monitor the migration of electronic excitations with high time and spatial resolution, using electromagnetically induced transparency on a background gas acting as an amplifier. The continuous spatial projection of the electronic quantum state under observation determines the many-body dynamics of the energy transport.

DOI
10.1126/science.1244843

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Electronically highly excited (Rydberg) atoms experience quantum state-changing interactions similar to Förster processes found in complex molecules, offering a model system to study the nature of dipole-mediated energy transport under the influence of a controlled environment. We demonstrate a nondestructive imaging method to monitor the migration of electronic excitations with high time and spatial resolution, using electromagnetically induced transparency on a background gas acting as an amplifier. The continuous spatial projection of the electronic quantum state under observation determines the many-body dynamics of the energy transport.
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.
The long-range, anisotropic nature of the interaction among atoms in an ultracold dipolar gas leads to a rich array of possibilities for studying many-body physics. In this work, an ultracold gas of highly excited atoms is used to study energy transport due to the long-range dipole-dipole interaction. A technique is developed to measure both the internal energy states of the interacting Rydberg atoms and their positions in space. This technique is demonstrated by observing energy exchange between two spatially separated groups of Rydberg atoms excited to two different internal states. Simulations confirm the general features of the energy transport in this system and highlight subtleties associated with the homogeneity of the electric field used in this experiment.
This thesis investigates different aspects of strongly interacting ultracold Rydberg gases coupled by light, including the excitation of correlated structures called Rydberg aggregates and dipolar energy transport. For this purpose an experimental apparatus has been constructed. We study coherent population trapping (CPT) and electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) involving Rydberg states. To study the formation of Rydberg aggregates we use full counting statistics (FCS) which makes it possible to infer the size of Rydberg aggregates. Dephasing during the excitation is found to have a dramatic effect on the formation process, leading to sequential growth around an initial grain. Rydberg state EIT is used to realize a new direct optical imaging scheme for Rydberg atoms which combines highly sensitive detection with high spatial and temporal resolution. Applying this technique we observe dipole-mediated energy transport processes between Rydberg atoms. We study classical transport in the presence of strong measurement induced decoherence. The strong interactions are seen to mediate long-range hopping significantly beyond nearest neighbors. We present first indications for coherent transport in this system. These experiments shed light on the role of correlations in the excitation and evolution of strongly interacting quantum systems and e.g. could possibly be used to model energy transport in biological systems. \n
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.
The strong interactions between Rydberg excitations can result in spatial correlations between the excitations. The ability to control the interaction strength and the correlations between Rydberg atoms is applicable in future technological implementations of quantum computation. In this thesis, I investigates how both the character of the Rydberg-Rydberg interactions and the details of the excitation process affect the nature of the spatial correlations and the evolution of those correlations in time. I first describes the experimental apparatus and methods used to perform high-magnification Rydberg-atom imaging, as well as three experiments in which these methods play an important role. The obtained Rydberg-atom positions reveal the correlations in the many-body Rydberg-atom system and their time dependence with sub-micron spatial resolution. In the first experiment, atoms are excited to a Rydberg state that experiences a repulsive van der Waals interaction. The Rydberg excitations are prepared with a well-defined initial separation, and the effect of van der Waals forces is observed by tracking the interatomic distance between the Rydberg atoms. The atom trajectories and thereby the interaction coefficient C6 are extracted from the pair correlation functions of the Rydberg atom positions. In the second experiment, the Rydberg atoms are prepared in a highly dipolar state by using adiabatic state transformation. The atom-pair kinetics that follow from the strong dipole-dipole interactions are observed. The pair correlation results provide the first direct visualization of the electric-dipole interaction and clearly exhibit its anisotropic nature. In both the first and the second experiment, results of semi-classical simulations of the atom-pair trajectories agree well with the experimental data. In the analysis, I use energy conservation and measurements of the initial positions and the terminal velocities of the atom pairs to extract the C6 and C3 interaction coefficients. The final experiment demonstrates the ability to enhance or suppress the degree of spatial correlation in a system of Rydberg excitations, using a rotary-echo excitation process in concert with particular excitation laser detunings. The work in this thesis demonstrates an ability to control long-range interactions between Rydberg atoms, which paves the way towards preparing and studying increasingly complex many-body systems.