Quantum entanglement of helium atom in high-lying Rydberg states

Steven L. Fiedler, Jussi Eloranta

Y.-C. Lin, T. K. Fang, Y. K. Ho

Xiao‐Qiang Shao, Jin-Hui Wu, X. X. Yi

A quantum-feedback-based scheme is proposed for generating multipartite entanglements of Rydberg atoms in a dissipative optical cavity. The Rydberg blockade mechanism efficiently prevents double excitations of the system, which is further exploited to speed up the stabilization of an entangled state with a single Rydberg state excitation. The corresponding feedback operations are greatly simplified, since only one regular atom needs to be controlled during the whole process, irrespective of the number of particles. The form of the entangled state is also adjustable via regulating the Rabi frequencies of driving fields. Moreover, a relatively long lifetime of the high-lying Rydberg level guarantees a high fidelity in a realistic situation.

João D. Rodrigues, Luís F. Gonçalves, Hugo Terças +2 more

Atoms excited into high-lying Rydberg states and under strong dipole-dipole interactions exhibit phenomena associated with highly correlated and complex systems. We perform first-principles numerical simulations on the dynamics of such systems. The emergence of a roton minimum in the excitation spectrum, as expected in strongly correlated gases and accurately described by Feynman's theory of liquid helium, is shown to significantly inhibit particle transport, with a strong suppression of the diffusion coefficient, due to the emerging spatial order. We also demonstrate how the ability to temporally tune the interaction strength among Rydberg atoms can be used in order to overcome the effects of disorder-induced heating, allowing the study of unprecedented highly coupled regimes.

Przemysław Kościk, Jayanta K. Saha

Xinyue Zhang

Highly excited Rydberg states, neutral atomic states with one or more electrons promoted to states of large principal quantum number n are now commonly used for producing quantum entanglement. This is facilitated through the "Rydberg Blockade" effect where the presence of a single Rydberg atom blocks excitation of further atoms in a surrounding mesoscopic volume due to strong atom-atom interactions induced by the large dipole moments associated with Rydberg atoms. In this work, we report the first observation of this phenomenon in a hot atomic beam using very high n, n ~300 - 500, strontium nF Rydberg states. Inside the blockaded volume (size around 0.1mm), the Rydberg number distribution is sub-Poissonian. However, as predicted by theoretical calculations, due to the anisotropic nature of the atom-atom interactions, the blockade is incomplete. However, the blockade effect is sufficiently strong to enable detailed study of few-body atom-atom interactions and of entanglement. Doubly-excited Rydberg states having a pair of electrons excited to high lying energy levels are typically difficult to create and are short lived because of "autoionization" resulting from electron-electron scattering. Strontium Rydberg atoms are used to study this scattering and we demonstrate an efficient mechanism to eliminate "autoionization" pointing to the production of long-lived strongly correlated two-electron-excited atomic states.