Quantum Manybody Physics with Rydberg Polaritons
Jonathan Simon
Abstract : Over the course of this award, an apparatus for studying a new type of synthetic material was designed, built, and tested, and a complete framework for engineering Hamiltonians developed. We built a machine capable of laser cooling 87Rb atoms, loading them into an optical lattice, and transporting them into a high-finesse, near-degenerate optical resonator, where they are dressed with a blue laser field, and Rydberg polaritonic physics may be explored. We experimentally demonstrated that photonic Landau levels could be generated for bulk photonic systems by employing a twisted resonator geometry, and that the physics of these photons could be explored on the surface of a cone. Furthermore, we exhaustively explored the physics and coherence of individual Rydberg polaritons. Along the way, we developed a novel FPGA-based feedback controller capable of control far beyond the PID regime, and employed it to enhance the feedback bandwidth in our experimental cavity lock by a factor often.
Bulletin of the American Physical Society•Jun 22, 2016•0 citations