Seeded excitation avalanches in off-resonantly driven Rydberg gases

TL;DR

This paper experimentally studies excitation avalanches in Rydberg gases driven off-resonance, revealing the facilitation process through controlled seeding, supported by models and simulations that match observed distributions.

Contribution

It introduces a method to separate initial excitation from facilitation, providing new insights into avalanche dynamics in Rydberg gases.

Findings

Controlled seeding enables detailed study of avalanches.

Models and simulations align with experimental data.

Full counting distributions reveal avalanche characteristics.

Abstract

We report an experimental investigation of the facilitated excitation dynamics in off-resonantly driven Rydberg gases by separating the initial off-resonant excitation phase from the facilitation phase, in which successive facilitation events lead to excitation avalanches. We achieve this by creating a controlled number of initial seed excitations. Greater insight into the avalanche mechanism is obtained from an analysis of the full counting distributions. We also present simple mathematical models and numerical simulations of the excitation avalanches that agree well with our experimental results.