On the adiabatic preparation of spatially-ordered Rydberg excitations of atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice by laser frequency sweeps

TL;DR

This paper investigates the feasibility of adiabatically creating ordered Rydberg excitation patterns in a one-dimensional lattice, revealing that realistic atomic decay and dephasing hinder perfect state preparation but preserve key statistical and spatial features.

Contribution

The study demonstrates through simulations that realistic decoherence significantly impacts adiabatic state preparation but maintains essential properties of the Rydberg crystal states.

Findings

Long adiabatic times are needed for crystalline state preparation.

Decoherence reduces overlap with target states.

Spatial order and sub-Poissonian statistics are preserved despite relaxation.

Abstract

We examine the adiabatic preparation of crystalline phases of Rydberg excitations in a one-dimensional lattice gas by frequency sweep of the excitation laser, as proposed by Pohl et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 043002 (2010)] and recently realized experimentally by Schau{\ss} et al. [Science 347, 1455 (2015)]. We find that the preparation of crystals of a few Rydberg excitations in a unitary system of several tens of atoms requires exceedingly long times for the adiabatic following of the ground state of the system Hamiltonian. Using quantum stochastic (Monte-Carlo) wavefunction simulations, we show that realistic decay and dephasing processes affecting the atoms during the preparation lead to a final state of the system that has only a small overlap with the target crystalline state. Yet, the final number and highly sub-Poissonian statistics of Rydberg excitations and their spatial order are little affected by the relaxations.