Classical and Quantum Description of Rydberg Atom

Richard Schmidt, J. D. Whalen, Roger Ding +8 more

We present a quantum many-body description of the excitation spectrum of Rydberg polarons in a Bose gas. The many-body Hamiltonian is solved with a functional determinant approach, and we extend this technique to describe Rydberg polarons of finite mass. Mean-field and classical descriptions of the spectrum are derived as approximations of the many-body theory. The various approaches are applied to experimental observations of polarons created by excitation of Rydberg atoms in a strontium Bose-Einstein condensate.

Kashif Ammar Yasir, Wu-Ming Liu

Thomas F. Gallagher

M. J. Gourlay, T. Uzer, David Farrelly

Rydberg atoms in external electric and magnetic fields have recently emerged as atomic-scale laboratories where the quantum mechanics of classically nonintegrable systems can be studied. In this article we show, using classical canonical perturbation theory, how the intricate nonlinear dynamics of a Rydberg electron in crossed electric and magnetic fields can be described in terms of two coupled asymmetric tops.

Daniel Kleppner

Beatriz Olmos, Rosario González‐Férez, Igor Lesanovsky

We study the excitation dynamics of Rydberg atoms in a one-dimensional lattice with periodic boundary conditions where the atomic Rydberg states are resonantly excited from the electronic ground state. Our description of the corresponding dynamics is numerically exact within the perfect blockade regime, i.e., no two atoms in a given range can be excited. The time evolution of the mean Rydberg density, density-density correlations, as well as entanglement properties is analyzed in detail. We demonstrate that the short-time dynamics is universal and dominated by quantum phenomena, while for larger time the characteristics of the lattice become important and the classical features determine the dynamics. The results of the perfect blockade approach are compared to the predictions of an effective Hamiltonian which includes the interaction of two neighboring Rydberg atoms up to the second-order perturbation theory.