Dresden 2011 – scientific programme
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A: Fachverband Atomphysik
A 25: Ultra-cold plasmas and Rydberg systems I
A 25.5: Talk
Thursday, March 17, 2011, 17:45–18:00, BAR 106
Quantum-Spin dynamics with ultracold Rydberg atoms — •Rejish Nath1, Daniel Charrier1, Igor Lesanovsky2, Andreas Läuchli1, and Thomas Pohl1 — 1MaxPlanck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Nöthnitzer strasse 38, D-01187, Dresden, Germany — 2University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, United Kingdom.
Rydberg atoms are emerging as a promising system to realize spin Hamiltonians with current experimental capabilities. As pointed out previously, groundstate-coupling to one Rydberg state leads to an effective spin-1/2 Ising-type model. Here we discuss an implementation of spin-1 Hamiltonians by exciting two distinct nS Rydberg states. It is shown that this not only increases the spin dimension but results in qualitatively different behavior due to the emergence of a "van der Waals hopping" term. Focussing on experimentally relevant parameters, we will present the resulting phase diagram in several simplifying limits.