Resonant Rydberg Dressing of Alkaline-Earth Atoms via Electromagnetically Induced Transparency

TL;DR

This paper introduces a resonant optical scheme using electromagnetically induced transparency to generate finite-range Rydberg interactions in alkaline-earth atoms, demonstrating long coherence times and effective interactions in experiments with strontium atoms.

Contribution

It presents a novel resonant EIT-based method for Rydberg dressing that achieves long coherence and strong interactions, advancing quantum simulation capabilities.

Findings

Effective interactions observed in cold strontium gas

Long coherence times achieved through EIT scheme

Atom loss matches theoretical predictions

Abstract

We develop an approach to generate finite-range atomic interactions via optical Rydberg-state excitation and study the underlying excitation dynamics in theory and experiment. In contrast to previous work, the proposed scheme is based on resonant optical driving and the establishment of a dark state under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). Analyzing the driven dissipative dynamics of the atomic gas, we show that the interplay between coherent light coupling, radiative decay and strong Rydberg-Rydberg atom interactions leads to the emergence of sizeable effective interactions while providing remarkably long coherence times. The latter are studied experimentally in a cold gas of strontium atoms for which the proposed scheme is most efficient. Our measured atom loss is in agreement with the theoretical prediction based on binary effective interactions between the driven atoms.