A stationary Rydberg polariton

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method to create stationary Rydberg polaritons using a dual-V level scheme, enabling enhanced interaction times for polaritons with potential applications in quantum information processing.

Contribution

It proposes a novel scheme for coupling Rydberg states to stationary light polaritons, demonstrating their properties and interaction effects within this new framework.

Findings

Stationary Rydberg polaritons exhibit quadratic dispersion similar to stationary light polaritons.

Strong interaction-induced absorption occurs due to Rydberg impurities.

The scheme could enable longer interaction times for polaritons in quantum applications.

Abstract

We propose a novel scheme for coupling a Rydberg state to a stationary light polariton, based on a dual-V level scheme. We investigate the properties of the resulting stationary Rydberg polariton, and show that its form and its quadratic dispersion relation closely resemble that of the stationary light polariton of the underlying dual-V scheme. We consider the influence of a Rydberg impurity on the system and find strong interaction-induced absorption of the involved probe field. The proposed scheme for a stationary Rydberg polariton might find applications for realizing interacting polaritons with increased interaction time.