Stuttgart 2012 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 34: Poster 1
Q 34.40: Poster
Tuesday, March 13, 2012, 16:30–19:00, Poster.I+II
Rydberg-dressed Bose-Einstein condensates — •Nils Henkel1, Fabian Maucher1, Fabio Cinti1, Rejish Nath4, Mark Saffmann2, Wieslaw Krolikowski3, Stefan Skupin1,5, and Thomas Pohl1 — 1Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden — 2University of Wisconsin, Madison — 3Australian National University, Canberra — 4Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Innsbruck — 5Friedrich Schiller University, Jena
We study Bose-Einstein condensates where atoms are far off-resonantly coupled to highly excited Rydberg states with strong van-der-Waals interactions. This Rydberg dressing leads to effective soft-core interactions with striking consequences: in the case of attractive Rydberg states, they allow for the preparation of three-dimensional self-trapped solitons; the matter-wave analogue of so-called light-bullets. For repulsive Rydberg states, the interaction gives rise to a transition from a superfluid to a supersolid state. Both effects are shown to occur at experimentally accessible parameters.