Heidelberg 2015 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 21: Ultra-cold plasmas and Rydberg systems II (with Q)

A 21.1: Talk

Wednesday, March 25, 2015, 11:00–11:15, C/kHS

Bistability in a dissipative Rydberg lattice model — •Dominik Linzner, Michael Höning, and Michael Fleischhauer — Fachbereich Physik and Forschungszentrum OPTIMAS, Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany

We study bistability in chains of atoms off-resonantly excited to strongly interacting Rydberg states. A novel approach enables simulation of system sizes substantially beyond previous investigations [1] by adapting established numeric methods based on matrix product states to dissipative systems. Whereas simulation of the dissipation free limit is infeasible using such methods, we show that the presence of dissipation renders the approach efficient.

The model gives unique insight into the emergence of bistability and the formation of aggregates in off-resonantly driven Rydberg systems. We quantitatively study the critical behavior of the size of aggregates and its relation to the overall time scale of relaxation. Based on this analysis we discuss the emergence of bimodal probability distributions for the number of excitations in extended systems and clarify the significance of earlier results obtained with a mean field ansatz.

[1] C. Ates et al., Phys. Rev. A, 85, 043620 (2012)