Dipole-dipole interaction driven antiblockade of two Rydberg atoms

TL;DR

This paper investigates how dipole-dipole interactions can induce Rydberg antiblockade, enabling simultaneous excitation of Rydberg atoms and potential quantum gate applications, expanding understanding beyond van der Waals interactions.

Contribution

It introduces the study of Rydberg antiblockade driven by dipole-dipole interactions and derives the effective Hamiltonian for such dynamics, highlighting robust geometric gate implementation.

Findings

Dipole-dipole interactions can induce Rydberg antiblockade.

Effective Hamiltonian for dipole-dipole driven antiblockade is derived.

Geometric gates can be realized with robustness against Rydberg state decay.

Abstract

Resonant laser excitation of multiple Rydberg atoms are prohibited, leading to Rydberg blockade, when the long-range van der Waals interactions are stronger than the laser-atom coupling. Rydberg blockade can be violated, i.e. simultaneous excitation of more than one Rydberg atoms, by off-resonant laser excitation, causing an excitation antiblockade. Rydberg antiblockade gives rise to strongly correlated many-body dynamics and spin-orbit coupling, and also finds quantum computation applications. Instead of commonly used van der Waals interactions, we investigate antiblockade dynamics of two Rydberg atoms interacting via dipole-dipole exchange interactions. We study typical situations in current Rydberg atoms experiments, where different types of dipole-dipole interactions can be achieved by varying Rydberg state couplings. Effective Hamiltonian governing underlying antiblockade dynamics is derived. We illustrate that geometric gates can be realized with the Rydberg antiblockade which is robust against decay of Rydberg states. Our study may stimulate new experimental and theoretical exploration of quantum optics and strongly interacting many-body dynamics with Rydberg antiblockade driven by dipole-dipole interactions.