Two-body interactions and decay of three-level Rydberg-dressed atoms

TL;DR

This paper provides a theoretical analysis of two- and three-level Rydberg-dressed atoms, revealing a resonant enhancement of interactions and potential for creating controllable quantum fluids with long-range, anisotropic interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a comparison between two-level and three-level Rydberg-dressing schemes and identifies a resonant enhancement mechanism for interaction strength.

Findings

Resonant enhancement of three-level dressed interactions due to multiphoton couplings

The soft-core potential shape is independent of the sign of the bare Rydberg interaction

Near-resonant dressing enables long-range, anisotropic, and controllable dissipation in quantum fluids

Abstract

We theoretically analyze the interactions and decay rates for atoms dressed by multiple laser fields to strongly interacting Rydberg states using a quantum master equation approach. In this framework a comparison of two-level and three-level Rydberg-dressing schemes is presented. We identify a resonant enhancement of the three-level dressed interaction strength which originates from cooperative multiphoton couplings as well as small distance dependent decay rates. In this regime the soft-core shape of the potential is independent of the sign of the bare Rydberg-Rydberg interaction, while its sign can be repulsive or attractive depending on the intermediate state detuning. As a consequence, near-resonant Rydberg dressing in three-level atomic systems may enable the realization of laser driven quantum fluids with long-range and anisotropic interactions and with controllable dissipation.