Dephasing dynamics of Rydberg atom spin waves

TL;DR

This paper develops an analytical theory for the dephasing dynamics of Rydberg atom spin waves, revealing how interactions influence quantum light emission in cold atom ensembles, with validation against recent experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a new analytical model for Rydberg spin wave dephasing, connecting atomic interactions to observable quantum optical properties.

Findings

Derived analytical forms for spin wave pair correlation functions.

Identified distinctive scaling behaviors and exponential decay patterns.

Validated theoretical predictions with experimental data from Rb atom ensembles.

Abstract

A theory of Rydberg atom interactions is used to derive analytical forms for the spin wave pair correlation function in laser-excited cold-atom vapors. This function controls the quantum statistics of light emission from dense, inhomogeneous clouds of cold atoms of various spatial dimensionalities. The results yield distinctive scaling behaviors on the microsecond timescale, including generalized exponential decay. A detailed comparison is presented with a recent experiment on a cigar-shaped atomic ensemble [Y. Dudin and A. Kuzmich, Science 336, 887 (2012)], in which Rb atoms are excited to a set of Rydberg levels.