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arXiv · 2103.14383

Black-body radiation induced facilitated excitation of Rydberg atoms in optical tweezers

Lorenzo Festa·Nikolaus Lorenz·Lea-Marina Steinert·Zaijun Chen·Philip Osterholz·Robin Eberhard·Christian Gross
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Abstract

Black-body radiation, omnipresent at room temperature, couples nearby Rydberg states. The resulting state mixture features strong dipolar interactions, which may induce dephasing in a Rydberg many-body system. Here we report on a single atom resolved study of this state contamination and the emerging pairwise interactions in optical tweezers. For near-resonant laser detuning we observe characteristic correlations with a length scale set by the dipolar interaction. Our study reveals the microscopic origin of avalanche excitation observed in previous experiments.

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Lorenzo Festa, Nikolaus Lorenz, Lea-Marina Steinert, Zaijun Chen, Philip Osterholz, Robin Eberhard, Christian Gross. 2021-03-26. Black-body radiation induced facilitated excitation of Rydberg atoms in optical tweezers. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.105.013109

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