Hannover 2010 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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A: Fachverband Atomphysik
A 19: Ultra-Cold Plasmas and Rydberg System
A 19.2: Vortrag
Donnerstag, 11. März 2010, 11:00–11:15, B 302
Thermalization of a strongly interacting 1D Rydberg lattice gas — Beatriz Olmos1, Markus Müller2, and •Igor Lesanovsky3 — 1Instituto ’Carlos I’ de Fisica Teorica y Computacional and Departamento de Fisica Atomica, Molecular y Nuclear, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain — 2Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Innsbruck, and Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Innsbruck, Austria — 3School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
When Rydberg states are excited in a dense atomic gas the mean number of excited atoms reaches a stationary value after an initial transient period. We shed light on the origin of this steady state that emerges from a purely coherent evolution of a closed system. To this end we consider a one-dimensional ring lattice, and employ the perfect blockade model, i.e. the simultaneous excitation of Rydberg atoms occupying neighboring sites is forbidden. We derive an equation of motion which governs the system’s evolution in excitation number space. This equation possesses a steady state which is strongly localized. Our findings show that this state is to a good accuracy given by the density matrix of the microcanonical ensemble where the corresponding microstates are approximate zero energy eigenstates of the interaction Hamiltonian. We analyze the statistics of the Rydberg atom number count providing expressions for the number of excited Rydberg atoms and the Mandel Q-parameter in equilibrium.
[1] B. Olmos, M. Müller, I. Lesanovsky, arXiv:0907.4420 (2009)