GHz Rabi flopping to Rydberg states in hot atomic vapor cells

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates rapid, coherent Rabi oscillations to Rydberg states in hot atomic vapor, showing potential for room-temperature quantum devices and significantly faster quantum gate operations.

Contribution

It reports the first observation of sub-nanosecond Rabi oscillations to Rydberg states in thermal vapor, with good experimental and simulation agreement, highlighting new possibilities for quantum technology.

Findings

Achieved up to 6 Rabi cycles within 4 ns pulse duration

Observed coherent Rydberg dynamics in thermal vapor at room temperature

Indicated potential for accelerating quantum gate operations by three orders of magnitude

Abstract

We report on the observation of Rabi oscillations to a Rydberg state on a timescale below one nanosecond in thermal rubidium vapor. We use a bandwidth-limited pulsed excitation and observe up to 6 full Rabi cycles within a pulse duration of ~ 4 ns. We find good agreement between the experiment and numerical simulations based on a surprisingly simple model. This result shows that fully coherent dynamics with Rydberg states can be achieved even in thermal atomic vapor thus suggesting small vapor cells as a platform for room temperature quantum devices. Furthermore the result implies that previous coherent dynamics in single atom Rydberg gates can be accelerated by three orders of magnitude.