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Physical Review A

Trap losses induced by near-resonant Rydberg dressing of cold atomic gases

J. A. Aman, B. J. DeSalvo, F. B. Dunning, T. C. Killian, S. Yoshida, Joachim Burgdörfer

Published Apr 29, 2016• 37 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The near-resonant dressing of cold strontium gases and Bose-Einstein condensates contained in an optical dipole trap (ODT) with the $5s30s^{\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}3}S_{1}$ Rydberg state is investigated as a function of the effective two-photon Rabi frequency, detuning, and dressing time. The measurements demonstrate that a rapid decrease in the ground-state atom population in the ODT occurs even for weak dressing and when well detuned from resonance. This decrease is attributed to Rydberg atom excitation, which can lead to direct escape from the trap and to population of very long-lived $5s5p^{\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}3}P_{0,2}$ metastable states. The effects of interactions between Rydberg atoms, including those populated by blackbody radiation, are analyzed. The work has important implications when considering the use of Rydberg dressing to control the interactions between dressed ground-state atoms.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.93.043425

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The near-resonant dressing of cold strontium gases and Bose-Einstein condensates contained in an optical dipole trap (ODT) with the 5s30s3S15s30s^{\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}3}S_{1}5s30s3S1​ Rydberg state is investigated as a function of the effective two-photon Rabi frequency, detuning, and dressing time. The measurements demonstrate that a rapid decrease in the ground-state atom population in the ODT occurs even for weak dressing and when well detuned from resonance. This decrease is attributed to Rydberg atom excitation, which can lead to direct escape from the trap and to population of very long-lived 5s5p3P0,25s5p^{\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}3}P_{0,2}5s5p3P0,2​ metastable states. The effects of interactions between Rydberg atoms, including those populated by blackbody radiation, are analyzed. The work has important implications when considering the use of Rydberg dressing to control the interactions between dressed ground-state atoms.
Abstract Long ground-Rydberg coherence lifetime is interesting for implementing high-fidelity quantum logic gates, many-body physics, and other quantum information protocols. However, the potential formed by a conventional far-off-resonance red-detuned optical-dipole trap (ODT) is usually repulsive for Rydberg atoms, which will result in fast atom loss and low repetition rate of the experimental sequence. These issues can be addressed by a magic ODT. We performed the calculation of ODT’s magic detuning for confinement of ground-state and Rydberg-state cesium atoms with the same potential well. We used a sum-over-states method to calculate the dynamic polarizabilities of 6S 1/2 ground state and highly-excited ( n S 1/2 and n P 3/2 ) Rydberg state of cesium atoms, and identify corresponding magic detuning for optical wavelengths in the range of 850–1950 nm. We estimated the trapping lifetime of cesium Rydberg atoms confined in the magic ODT by including different dissipative mechanisms. Furthermore, we have experimentally realized an 1879.43 nm single-frequency laser system with a watt-level output power for setting up the magic ODT for 6S 1/2 ground-state and 84P 3/2 Rydberg-state cesium cold atoms.
Rydberg-dressed ground state atoms are atoms with an electron off-resonantly excited to a very high energy state, i.e., a state of high principal quantum number n ≫ 1. This thesis investigates the quantum dynamics of interacting Rydberg-dressed ground state atoms trapped in several multi-well potential traps. Rydberg atoms are atoms with exaggerated properties. One of their most interesting properties is that they exhibit a strong and long-ranged interaction that can be tuned leading to a variety of different quantum behaviours. My work focuses on studying the effects of these interacting atoms when loaded in multi-well potential traps. Generally, multi-well systems are considered as the simplest example of a finite optical lattice structure. For this reason, this thesis covers three research topics that examine the effects of long-range interaction on Rydberg-dressed atoms trapped in several potential confinements. I begin, in the introduction, by discussing the theoretical background of relevance to this work. It starts with presenting the physics of Bose-Einstein condensate. Then, the fundamentals of the interaction between two-level atom and light are analytically studied. This study has the purpose of understanding both; the dressed interacting atoms and optical lattices. The definition, characteristics, and the nature of the interaction between Rydberg atoms are analysed afterwards. The second chapter examines the dynamics of an ensemble of interacting Rydberg- dressed atoms trapped in static, i.e., time-independent, multi-well potentials using a mean-field theoretical approach. I choose one-dimensional double- and triple-well in addition to a two-dimensional quadruple-well potentials. The time-dependent non-linear Gross-Pitaevskii equation is used to numerically explore the ensemble’s quantum dynamics. Solving the dynamical differential equations along with tuning the strength of the applied long-range interaction shows that the behaviour of non-interacting Rydberg-dressed atoms does not differ conceptually according to the geometry of the trapping potential. However, this changes when the interactions are switched on where the shape of the confinement leads to interesting outcomes especially in the non-linear interacting limit, such as macroscopic quantum self-trapping. After investigating an ensemble of interacting Rydberg-dressed atoms in static multi-well potential traps, the second research topic examines the dynamical evolution of these atoms when loaded in a finite optical lattice using the extended Bose-Hubbard model. In this chapter, the atoms ensemble is assumed to be in a superfluid state where I investigate both, the order parameter when the Rydberg excitation laser is applied and the interference pattern of the condensates in different dimensions. The study shows the emerging long-range interactions lead to a rapid collapse of the superfluid order parameter and in general allow only for partial revivals. In addition, the interference experiments can directly reveal the interaction between Rydberg-dressed atoms. In the fourth chapter, the dynamics of Rydberg-dressed atoms trapped in a dynamical, i.e., time-dependent, potential confinement is presented. The dynamical trap is constructed such that it begins as a harmonic oscillator and ends as a double- well potential. The analysis investigates an ensemble of contact-interacting atoms via the time-dependent non-linear GP equation.
We develop an approach to generate finite-range atomic interactions via optical Rydberg-state excitation and study the underlying excitation dynamics in theory and experiment. In contrast to previous work, the proposed scheme is based on resonant optical driving and the establishment of a dark state under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). Analyzing the driven dissipative dynamics of the atomic gas, we show that the interplay between coherent light coupling, radiative decay, and strong Rydberg-Rydberg atom interactions leads to the emergence of sizable effective interactions while providing remarkably long coherence times. The latter are studied experimentally in a cold gas of strontium atoms for which the proposed scheme is most efficient. Our measured atom loss is in agreement with the theoretical prediction based on binary effective interactions between the driven atoms.
This thesis describes Rydberg spectroscopy and dressing experiments in an ultracold strontium gas. The strontium atoms are cooled to sub-uK temperatures in a narrowline magneto-optical trap, where Rydberg atoms are created using a two-photon excitation scheme. This required the development of a high-power ultraviolet laser system at 319 nm. The laser has a large tuning range for access to triplet Rydberg states from principal quantum numbers of 35 to > 300. By performing Rydberg spectroscopy in a magneto-optical trap, we show that narrow spectra can be obtained where the line centre is determined to ~ 10 kHz. A frequency comb is then employed to make absolute frequency measurements of optical transitions to accuracies of < 2 MHz. Techniques are outlined for improving the accuracy further, showing that overall uncertainties on the order of 10 kHz can be obtained. The reliable measurement of Rydberg levels is important for studying the variation in quantum defect across Rydberg series, and hence improving the accuracy of atomic models. In this work we also develop a novel system in which to realise Rydberg dressing. By resonantly coupling the excited state of the cooling transition to a high lying Rydberg state, we create a Rydberg-dressed magneto-optical trap. We demonstrate that the atoms acquire Rydberg properties, while undergoing continuous cooling at ~ 1 uK. The lifetime of the trap is proved to be sufficiently long to observe interactions, however the interaction strength is currently limited by the non-uniform spatial profile of the dressing beam. Straightforward methods to overcome this limitation are presented. As such this work should lead to future experiments, whereby tuneable long-range interactions can be observed in the dynamics of the dressed magneto-optical trap.
We examine interactions between atoms continuously and coherently driven between the ground state and a Rydberg state, producing ``Rydberg-dressed atoms.'' Because of the large dipolar coupling between two Rydberg atoms, a small admixture of Rydberg character into a ground state can produce an atom with a dipole moment of a few debye, the appropriate size to observe interesting dipolar physics effects in cold atom systems. We have calculated the interaction energies for atoms that interact via the dipole-dipole interaction and find that because of blockade effects, the RRR dependent two-atom interaction terms are limited in size and can be RRR independent up until the dipolar energy is equal to the detuning. This produces RRR dependent interactions different from the expected 1/R31/{R}^{3}1/R3 dipolar form that have no direct analogy in condensed-matter physics and could lead to interesting quantum phases in trapped Rydberg systems.