Hannover 2010 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 19: Ultra-Cold Plasmas and Rydberg System

A 19.6: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 11. März 2010, 12:00–12:15, B 302

Controlling Interactions and Optical Properties of Cold Rydberg Gases — •Sevilay Sevincli and Thomas Pohl — Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Noethnitzer Strasse 38, 01187 Dresden, Germany

The high sensitivity of Rydberg atoms to external fields as well as interactions among them leads to strong a enhancement of optical nonlinearities in ultra-cold Rydberg gases. Here we present a many-body density-matrix approach that allows to describe such problems under EIT conditions. We find a strong influence of both the effects of an external electric field as well as strong van der Waals interactions on the optical response of an ultra-cold Rydberg gas, and determine the corresponding optical nonlinearities.

We, moreover, develop a scheme that enables external control of the atom's van der Waals interactions, and even permits to turn them off, while preserving the high polarizability of the Rydberg state. This in turn is shown to yield a greatly enhanced Kerr coefficient under a highly coherent many-body gas dynamics.