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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 41: Poster Session IIIa

A 41.26: Poster

Donnerstag, 8. März 2018, 16:15–18:15, Orangerie

Optical bistability in thermal Rydberg vapor — •Patrick Kaspar, Daniel Weller, Nico Sieber, Robert Löw, and Harald Kübler — 5. Physikalisches Institut, Universität Stuttgart, Deutschland

Vapor cells filled with thermal atomic gas are one promising building block for future applications in quantum communication and sensing [1]. It is therefore crucial to gain a fundamental understanding of all the physical effects happening inside such a cell when addressing the atoms with laser beams. One particularly interesting effect happens when exciting an atomic ensemble to Rydberg states: at large Rabi frequencies compared to the weak probe regime, the system undergoes a hysteresis in the absorption spectrum of an EIT-like excitation scheme [2]. Recently we have shown that dipolar interactions between Rydberg atoms can be ruled out as the origin of this bistability, and have placed Coulomb interactions in the focus of our research: due to the large polarizability of Rydberg states, ionized atoms nearby cause the required energy shift leading to the observed nonlinearity [3]. Here we present our measurement techniques to fully understand the mechanisms involved: a two-species EIT-spectroscopy in rubidium allows us to determine the electric fields present in the vapour cell during Rydberg excitation, and fluorescence detection enables us to study the significantly altered spectrum due to the presence of charged particles.

[1] Nature Physics 8, 819--824 (2012), arXiv:1709.00262(2017)

[2] Phys. Rev. Lett. 111 113901 (2013)

[3] Phys. Rev. A 94, 063820 (2016)