Bonn 2025 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 28: Poster – Ultra-cold Plasmas and Rydberg Systems (joint session A/Q)

Q 28.3: Poster

Dienstag, 11. März 2025, 14:00–16:00, Tent

Continuous observation of non-equilibrium phase transitions in facilitated Rydberg avalanches — •Patrick Mischke, Fabian Isler, Jana Bender, Thomas Niederprüm, and Herwig Ott — Department of Physics and research center OPTIMAS, RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau

We investigate the facilitation dynamics in a Rydberg system and the phase transition resulting from the interplay between driving strength and excitation decay.

In an off-resonantly driven cloud of atoms, the strong dipole-dipole interactions between two Rydberg states compensates the laser detuning for a specific interatomic distance. For high enough driving strength, this results in a spreading of correlated excitations. We investigate the non-equilibrium steady state phase transition between this active phase and the absorbing phase in which the spread of excitations is suppressed.

Non-destructive phase-contrast imaging is employed to continuously monitor the ground state density of our sample. Time resolved ion detection enables the characterization of excitation avalanches around the critical point of the phase transition. We use this information to extract the relevant universal exponents.

Keywords: Rydberg; facilitation dynamics; phase transition; non-equilibrium steady state; phase contrast imaging