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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 12: Ultracold plasmas and Rydberg atoms (with Q)

A 12.1: Gruppenbericht

Montag, 18. März 2013, 16:30–17:00, E 415

Steady-state crystallization of Rydberg excitations in optically driven atomic ensembles — •Michael Höning¹, Dominik Muth¹, David Petrosyan², and Michael Fleischhauer¹ — ¹Fachbereich Physik und Landesforschungszentrum OPTIMAS, TU Kaiserslautern — ²Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser, FORTH, GR-71110 Heraklion, Crete, Greece

We study the emergence of many-body correlations in strongly-interacting, driven dissipative systems. Specifically, we examine resonant optical excitations of Rydberg states of atoms interacting via long-range van der Waals potential employing exact numerical methods such as t-DMRG and semiclassical Monte-Carlo simulations. In a one-dimensional lattice of atoms with nearly complete blockade of simultaneous excitation at the adjacent sites, we find that, under appropriate (dark-state) driving, the atoms can develop finite-range crystalline order of Rydberg excitations. At higher atomic densities, all atoms within the blockade radius form "superatoms", each accommodating at most one Rydberg excitation. Under strong uniform driving, the saturation of superatoms leads to quasi-crystallization of Rydberg excitations whose correlations exhibit damped spatial oscillations. The behavior of the system can be approximated by an analytically soluble model based on a "hard-rod" interatomic potential.