Integrating Rydberg-state control of atom-atom interactions with cavity control of atom-light interactions enables the combination of local entangling operations with photon-mediated long-range coupling, measurement, and communication. Such integration is challenging because electric fields generated by charges on cavity optics and by cavity-stabilizing actuators may disturb Rydberg-state coherence. Here, we couple a Rydberg tweezer array to a high-cooperativity optical cavity, suppressing the electric fields produced by cavity length actuation so that the residual field variation of about
3 mV/cm rms does not limit Rydberg coherence. We demonstrate two capabilities that neither system provides alone. First, we use Purcell-enhanced fluorescence to read out atoms directly in the ground-Rydberg basis within
7.5 μs, well within the Rydberg-state lifetime, with ground- and Rydberg-state detection infidelities of
3% and
5%, respectively, and with low atom loss. Second, we use Rydberg-Rydberg interactions to control collective light-atom scattering into the cavity mode. Specifically, we drive blockaded Rabi oscillations between a state with two ground-state atoms, which scatter collectively with a superradiant or subradiant rate controlled by the atomic positions, and an entangled state with a single Rydberg excitation, which scatters like a single atom. These capabilities open routes toward networked Rydberg processors, mid-circuit measurements in analog quantum simulators, and many-body quantum optics with entangled emitters coupled collectively to light.
We investigate the coherent manipulation of interacting Rydberg atoms placed inside a high-finesse optical cavity for the deterministic preparation of strongly coupled light-matter systems. We consider a four-level diamond scheme with one common Rydberg level for N interacting atoms. One side of the diamond is used to excite the atoms into a collective `superatom' Rydberg state using either π-pulses or stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) pulses. The upper transition on the other side of the diamond is used to transfer the collective state to one that is coupled to a field mode of an optical cavity. Due to the strong interaction between the atoms in the Rydberg level, the Rydberg blockade mechanism plays a key role in the deterministic quantum state synthesis of the atoms in the cavity. We use numerical simulation to show that non-classical states of light can be generated and that the state that is coupled to the cavity field is a collective one. We also investigate how different decay mechanisms affect this interacting many-body system. We also analyze our system in the case of two Rydberg excitations within the blockade volume. The simulations are carried out with parameters corresponding to realizable high-finesse optical cavities and alkali atoms like rubidium.