Spectral Line Width Broadening from Pair Fluctuation in a Frozen Rydberg Gas

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that spectral line width broadening in frozen Rydberg gases is primarily caused by rare pair fluctuations rather than diffusion, challenging previous diffusion-based explanations and aligning with experimental observations.

Contribution

The study introduces a model showing pair fluctuations, not diffusion, dominate line broadening, providing a new understanding of the phenomenon in Rydberg gases.

Findings

Line width is 20-30 times larger than average interaction strength.

Diffusion process has minimal impact on line width when turned off.

Rare pair fluctuations are the main contributor to broadening.

Abstract

Spectral line width broadening in Rydberg gases, a phenomenon previously attributed to the many-body effect, was observed experimentally almost a decade ago. The observed line width was typically 80-100 times larger than the average interaction strength predicted from a binary interaction. The interpretation of such a phenomenon is usually based on the so-called diffusion model, where the line width broadening mostly originates from the diffusion of excitations. In this paper, we present a model calculation to show that diffusion is not the main mechanism to the line width broadening. We find that the rare pair fluctuation at small separation is the dominant factor contributing to this broadening. Our results give a width of about 20-30 times larger than the average interaction strength. More importantly, by turning off the diffusion process, we do not observe order of magnitude change in the spectral line width.