Rydberg interaction induced enhanced excitation in thermal atomic vapor

TL;DR

This paper experimentally demonstrates Rydberg anti-blockade in thermal vapor, showing enhanced excitation due to interactions, with a model explaining the observations and potential applications in quantum computing.

Contribution

The study provides the first experimental observation of Rydberg anti-blockade in thermal vapor and develops a model to explain the interaction-induced enhancement.

Findings

Observation of anti-blockade peak in thermal vapor

Non-linear vapor density dependence on Rydberg state

Good agreement between experiment and interacting atom model

Abstract

We present the experimental demonstration of interaction induced enhancement in Rydberg excitation or Rydberg anti-blockade in thermal atomic vapor. We have used optical heterodyne detection technique to measure Rydberg population due to two-photon excitation to the Rydberg state. The anti-blockade peak which doesn't satisfy the two-photon resonant condition is observed along with the usual two-photon resonant peak which can't be explained using the model with non-interacting three-level atomic system. A model involving two interacting atoms is formulated for thermal atomic vapor using the dressed states of three-level atomic system to explain the experimental observations. A non-linear dependence of vapor density is observed for the anti-blockade peak which also increases with increase in principal quantum number of the Rydberg state. A good agreement is found between the experimental observations and the proposed interacting model. Our result implies possible applications towards quantum logic gates using Rydberg anti-blockade in thermal atomic vapor.