Optical imaging of Rydberg atoms

We present an experiment exploring electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in Rydberg atoms in order to observe optical nonlinearities at the single photon level. ⁸⁷Rb atoms are trapped and cooled using a magneto-optical trap (MOT) and a far off resonance dipole trap (FORT). Once the system is prepared, a ladder EIT scheme with Rydberg atoms is used to map the photon field onto the ensemble. The powerful dipole interaction between Rydberg atoms allows the system to exhibit many-body quantum mechanical effects. We also describe an imaging method to observe the Rydberg blockade. Last of all, we present a preliminary measurement of EIT in a Rydberg system. In this measurement, the transmission shows sensitivity to the applied photon flux, and exhibits temporal correlations in the photons exiting the EIT medium.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Mazurenko, Anton

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Vladan Vuletić.

• Physics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/78519

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/78519