Interactions in an ultracold gas of Rydberg atoms

This thesis presents observations of ultralong range interactions <br>in a frozen Rydberg gas. The observed signatures are interactioninduced <br>line broadenings and a suppression of resonant Rydberg excitation. <br>The latter effect can be interpreted as the onset of a local dipole <br>blockade and can be exploited to perform quantum information processing <br>with mesoscopic ensembles. The dominating interaction between a <br>pair of Rydberg atoms separated as far as 100 000 Bohr radii is the <br>van der Waals interaction. The strength of this interaction is calculated <br>quantitatively in a perturbative approach. We describe in detail our <br>experimental apparatus which employs narrow-bandwidth continuouswave <br>(cw) laser excitation in a two-photon excitation process to produce <br>a frozen Rydberg gas from magneto-optically trapped 87Rb atoms. As a <br>particular feature of the apparatus we have implemented a novel scheme <br>for the coherent addition of laser intensities and we have realized 3D degenerate <br>Raman sideband cooling resulting in atom cloud temperatures <br>in the sub-µK range. Systematic studies of the Rydberg spectra as <br>a function of excitation-laser intensity, density of excitable atoms and <br>excitation time are presented.

Author dc:creator

• Singer, Kilian Talo Theodor

Contributors dc:contributor

• Weidemüller, Matthias

• Wechselwirkung, ultrakalte Gase
• Rydberg atoms, interaction, ultracold gases

Repository record source_url

https://freidok.uni-freiburg.de/data/1664

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:freidok.uni-freiburg.de:1664