Experimental Creation of Single Rydberg Excitations via Adiabatic Passage

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a robust method for creating single Rydberg excitations in atomic ensembles using adiabatic rapid passage, improving efficiency and phase preservation over traditional techniques.

Contribution

It introduces the application of adiabatic rapid passage to Rydberg excitation, enhancing robustness and phase stability in atomic ensemble quantum information processing.

Findings

Chirped scheme preserves internal phases of Rydberg excitations.

Adiabatic rapid passage is more robust against laser intensity and detuning variations.

Method improves efficiency of single excitation creation.

Abstract

In an atomic ensemble, quantum information is typically carried as single collective excitations. It is very advantageous if the creation of single excitations is efficient and robust. Rydberg blockade enables deterministic creation of single excitations via collective Rabi oscillation by precisely controlling the pulse area, being sensitive to many experimental parameters. In this paper, we implement the adiabatic rapid passage technique to the Rydberg excitation process in a mesoscopic atomic ensemble. We make use of a two-photon excitation scheme with an intermediate state off-resonant and sweep the laser frequency of one excitation laser. We find the chirped scheme preserves internal phases of the collective Rydberg excitation and be more robust against variance of laser intensity and frequency detuning.