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arXiv · 2006.13526

A Weakly-Interacting Many-Body System of Rydberg Polaritons Based on Electromagnetically Induced Transparency

Abstract

We proposed utilizing a medium with a high optical depth (OD) and a Rydberg state of low principal quantum number, $n$, to create a weakly-interacting many-body system of Rydberg polaritons, based on the effect of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). We experimentally verified the mean field approach to weakly-interacting Rydberg polaritons, and observed the phase shift and attenuation induced by the dipole-dipole interaction (DDI). The DDI-induced phase shift or attenuation can be viewed as a consequence of the elastic or inelastic collisions among the Rydberg polaritons. Using a weakly-interacting system, we further observed that a larger DDI strength caused a width of the momentum distribution of Rydberg polaritons at the exit of the system to become notably smaller as compared with that at the entrance. In this study, we took $n =32$ and the atomic (or polariton) density of 5$\times10^{10}$ (or 2$\times10^{9}$) cm$^{-3}$. The observations demonstrate that the elastic collisions are sufficient to drive the thermalization process in this weakly-interacting many-body system. The combination of the $μ$s-long interaction time due to the high-OD EIT medium and the $μ$m$^2$-size collision cross section due to the DDI suggests a new and feasible platform for the Bose-Einstein condensation of the Rydberg polaritons.

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Bongjune Kim, Ko-Tang Chen, Shih-Si Hsiao, Sheng-Yang Wang, Kai-Bo Li, Julius Ruseckas, Gediminas Juzeliunas, Teodora Kirova, Marcis Auzinsh, Ying-Cheng Chen, Yong-Fan Chen, Ite A. Yu. 2021-05-25. A Weakly-Interacting Many-Body System of Rydberg Polaritons Based on Electromagnetically Induced Transparency. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-021-00604-5

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