Control of Spatial Correlations between Rydberg Excitations using Rotary Echo

Controlling the Dipole Blockade and Ionization Rate of Rydberg Atoms in Strong Electric Fields

We study a hitherto unexplored regime of the Rydberg excitation blockade using highly Stark-shifted, yet long-living, states of Rb atoms subject to electric fields above the classical ionization limit. Such states allow tuning the dipole-dipole interaction strength while their ionization rate can be changed over 2 orders of magnitude by small variations of the electric field. We demonstrate laser excitation of the interacting Rydberg states followed by their detection using controlled ionization and magnified imaging with high spatial and temporal resolution. Our work reveals new possibilities to engineer the interaction strength and dynamically control the ionization and detection of Rydberg atoms, which can be useful for realizing and assessing quantum simulators that vary in space and time.

Quantum state engineering by periodical two-step modulation in an atomic system

By periodical two-step modulation, we demonstrate that the dynamics of a multilevel system can evolve even in a multiple large detunings regime and provide the effective Hamiltonian (of interest) for this system. We then illustrate this periodical modulation in quantum state engineering, including achieving direct transition from the ground state to the Rydberg state or the desired superposition of two Rydberg states without satisfying the two-photon resonance condition, switching between the Rydberg blockade regime and the Rydberg antiblockade regime, stimulating distinct atomic transitions by the same laser field, and implementing selective transitions in the same multilevel system. Particularly, it is robust against perturbation of control parameters. Another advantage is that the waveform of the laser field has a simple square-wave form, which is readily implemented in experiments. Thus, it offers us a novel method of quantum state engineering in quantum information processing.

Observation of three-photon bound states in a quantum nonlinear medium

Bound states of massive particles, such as nuclei, atoms, or molecules, constitute the bulk of the visible world around us. By contrast, photons typically only interact weakly. We report the observation of traveling three-photon bound states in a quantum nonlinear medium where the interactions between photons are mediated by atomic Rydberg states. Photon correlation and conditional phase measurements reveal the distinct bunching and phase features associated with three-photon and two-photon bound states. Such photonic trimers and dimers possess shape-preserving wave functions that depend on the constituent photon number. The observed bunching and strongly nonlinear optical phase are described by an effective field theory of Rydberg-induced photon-photon interactions. These observations demonstrate the ability to realize and control strongly interacting quantum many-body states of light.

Quantum dynamics of long-range interacting systems using the positive-P and gauge-P representations

We provide the necessary framework for carrying out stochastic positive-P and gauge-P simulations of bosonic systems with long-range interactions. In these approaches, the quantum evolution is sampled by trajectories in phase space, allowing calculation of correlations without truncation of the Hilbert space or other approximations to the quantum state. The main drawback is that the simulation time is limited by noise arising from interactions. We show that the long-range character of these interactions does not further increase the limitations of these methods, in contrast to the situation for alternatives such as the density matrix renormalization group. Furthermore, stochastic gauge techniques can also successfully extend simulation times in the long-range-interaction case, by making using of parameters that affect the noise properties of trajectories, without affecting physical observables. We derive essential results that significantly aid the use of these methods: estimates of the available simulation time, optimized stochastic gauges, a general form of the characteristic stochastic variance, and adaptations for very large systems. Testing the performance of particular drift and diffusion gauges for nonlocal interactions, we find that, for small to medium systems, drift gauges are beneficial, whereas for sufficiently large systems, it is optimal to use only a diffusion gauge. The methods are illustrated with direct numerical simulations of interaction quenches in extended Bose-Hubbard lattice systems and the excitation of Rydberg states in a Bose-Einstein condensate, also without the need for the typical frozen gas approximation. We demonstrate that gauges can indeed lengthen the useful simulation time.