Dynamical Crystallization in the Dipole Blockade of Ultracold Atoms

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to create and control crystalline structures of Rydberg atoms in ultracold gases using laser excitation, enabling the generation of photonic crystalline states and their detection through photon correlations.

Contribution

It predicts the excitation number staircase and demonstrates selective excitation of crystalline Rydberg states using chirped laser pulses, advancing control over many-body quantum states.

Findings

Existence of excitation number staircase in Rydberg atom ensembles

Selective excitation of crystalline states with chirped laser pulses

Potential to generate and detect photonic crystalline states

Abstract

We describe a method for controlling many-body states in extended ensembles of Rydberg atoms, forming crystalline structures during laser excitation of a frozen atomic gas. Specifically, we predict the existence of an excitation number staircase in laser excitation of atomic ensembles into Rydberg states. Each step corresponds to a crystalline state with a well-defined of regularly spaced Rydberg atoms. We show that such states can be selectively excited by chirped laser pulses. Finally, we demonstarte that, sing quantum state transfer from atoms to light, such crystals can be used to create crystalline photonic states and can be probed via photon correlation measurements.