Collective many-body interaction in Rydberg dressed atoms

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to manipulate interaction potentials in cold atomic gases via Rydberg dressing, revealing a transition from two-body to collective many-body interactions influenced by Rydberg blockade effects, with implications for BEC experiments.

Contribution

It demonstrates a controllable way to induce and study collective many-body interactions in Rydberg-dressed atomic gases, highlighting the transition from two-body to collective regimes.

Findings

Identification of the crossover from two-particle to many-body interactions.

Optimal parameters for experimental detection of collective interactions.

Influence of Rydberg blockade on the interaction potential.

Abstract

We present a method to control the shape and character of the interaction potential between cold atomic gases by weakly dressing the atomic ground state with a Rydberg level. For increasing particle densities, a crossover takes place from a two-particle interaction into a collective many-body interaction, where the dipole-dipole/van der Waals Blockade phenomenon between the Rydberg levels plays a dominant role. We study the influence of these collective interaction potential on a Bose-Einstein condensate, and present the optimal parameters for its experimental detection.