Three-body interaction of Rydberg slow light polaritons

TL;DR

This paper derives and analyzes the effective three-body interactions among Rydberg slow light polaritons, revealing strong three-body repulsion and its effects on photon bound states and correlations in a one-dimensional medium.

Contribution

It provides an analytical derivation of the three-body interaction for Rydberg polaritons and explores its impact on photon correlations and bound states.

Findings

Strong three-body repulsion among polaritons

Three polaritons can become non-interacting at short distances

Influence on photon bound states and correlations

Abstract

We study a system of three photons in an atomic medium coupled to Rydberg states near the conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency. Based on the analytical analysis of the microscopic set of equations in the far-detuned regime, the effective three-body interaction for these Rydberg polaritons is derived. For slow light polaritons, we find a strong three-body repulsion with the remarkable property that three polaritons can become essentially non-interacting at short distances. This analysis allows us to derive the influence of the three-body repulsion on bound states and correlation functions of photons propagating through a one-dimensional atomic cloud.