Dresden 2011 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 25: Ultra-cold plasmas and Rydberg systems I

A 25.7: Talk

Thursday, March 17, 2011, 18:15–18:30, BAR 106

Relaxation dynamics of an ultracold Rydberg lattice gas — •Cenap Ates and Igor Lesanovsky — School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, NG7 2RD Nottingham, United Kingdom

The discussion about if and how a closed non-equilibrium quantum system relaxes to an equilibrium state compatible with familiar statistical mechanics has gained renewed interest, since experiments are on the horizon that can implement the theoretically studied models with ultracold atomic systems. In this spirit, the long-time dynamics of a coherently driven Rydberg ring was recently studied theoretically. It was shown that for strong Rydberg-Rydberg interactions ''classical'' observables like the number of excited particles indeed relax towards a state which can be characterized by a thermal distribution [1].

Here we focus on the relaxation process itself. We show that the time it takes to reach the equilibrium state depends non-trivially on the interaction strength. In particular, we demonstrate that the equilibration process dramatically slows down a the point, where the Rydberg blockade sets in.

[1] I. Lesanovsky, B. Olmos and J.P. Garrahan, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 100603 (2010)