Description
Combining cold Rydberg atoms with an optical nanofiber (ONF) apparatus provides a platform for both investigating the generation and manipulation of Rydberg atoms, but also an ideal way for generating a 1D chains of Rydberg atoms using the strong interactions of atom-ONF hybrid systems combined with the ability to trap atoms at the surface of the fiber in a 1D chain.
The evanescent field produced via the tight confinement of the light in an ONF allows for strong light-matter interactions for relatively low laser powers, and the easy interfacing with existing optical systems makes it an ideal system for the development of quantum technologies. Atom based ONF systems have shown great success in the field of atom optics, and with our recent success of exciting atoms to the Rydberg state via the evanescent field of the fiber! [1], are now a potential new platform for developing Rydberg based quantum information systems.
Rydberg atoms, with their large electric field sensitivity and strong inter-atomic interactions leading to the famed Rydberg blockade, are a strong candidate for quantum information systems and have been a topic of significant interest over the past years.
ONF systems have been used to trap atoms at the surface of the fiber using two-color dipole traps, one providing the attractive potential, and the other providing a repulsive potential forms a potential minima a small distance on the order of 200~nm from the fiber surface. Carefully selecting the wavelengths of the dipole trap, a magic wavelength condition [2] for Rydberg states can allow for the trapping of both the Rydberg and the ground state of the atoms in the same potential.
We present our results on the experimental excitation of Rydberg atoms next to an optical nanofiber and present the plans for extending our dipole trap for ground state atoms to also allow for the trapping of Rydberg atoms at the surface of the fiber, paving the way for experiments such as the investigation of 1D many body systems and the development of quantum gates.
-
Krishnapriya Subramonian Rajasree, Tridib Ray, Kristoffer Karlsson, Jesse L. Everett, and Síle Nic Chormaic, "Generation of cold Rydberg atoms at submicron distances from an optical nanofiber", Phys. Rev. Research 2, 012038(R), 2020
-
Jiandong Bai, Shuo Liu, Jun He and Junmin Wang, "Towards implementation of a magic optical-dipole trap for confining ground-state and Rydberg-state cesium cold atoms", J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 53, 155302, 2022
| Presenter name | Dylan Brown |
|---|---|
| How will you attend ICAP-27? | I am planning on in-person attendance |
