We report on experiments on Rydberg–Rydberg interaction-induced effects in a gas of 87 Rb Rydberg atoms. A compact setup for two-photon continuous-wave excitation of high-lying Rydberg states out of an ultracold atomic gas is presented. The performance of the apparatus is characterized by high-resolution spectroscopy of Rydberg states. Signatures of interaction-induced effects are identified by qualitatively analysing the dependence of Rydberg excitation spectra on the intensity and the duration of the second-step laser excitation.
Ultracold atomic systems provide pristine environments for creating and manipulating strongly-interacting quantum systems. The flexibility and utility of ultracold atomic systems comes at the cost of isolation of the quantum system away from environmental perturbations inside of an ultra-high vacuum chamber. This isolation reduces the number of ways that these systems can be probed, in particular, there are relatively few ways to probe correlations in these systems at mesoscopic length scales. In this thesis we present a new technique for probing correlations in ultracold atomic gases using ultralong-range Rydberg molecules. We will present a description of the relevant experimental apparatus and techniques developed for laser cooling and trapping ultracold mixtures of Sr, and a brief theoretical discussion on the relationship between the pair correlation function
g(2)(R) and the excitation rates of ultralong-range Rydberg molecules. We present two publications: the first on using ultralong-range Rydberg molecules to probe
g(2)(R) in thermal gases, and the second on the creation of heteronuclear ultralong-range Rydberg molecules from a strongly interacting Bose mixture of
88Sr and
84Sr. Finally, we will present conclusions and a brief outlook for the future experiments utilizing this method.