Many-body physics of optically excited, frozen Rydberg gases

POSTER

Abstract

We discuss the many-body physics of an ensemble of optically excited Rydberg atoms with van der Waals dipole-dipole interactions [1]. Starting from a fully quantized model of the optical excitation we show that Rydberg excitations always possess a finite kinetic energy mediated by photon exchange even if the motion of the atoms can be disregarded. The kinetic energy competes with the repulsive vdW interactions. Using discretization and DMRG, we calculate the many-body ground state in the one-dimensional case. It is correlated much more strongly than possible for any local interaction, i.e., with a Luttinger parameter $K \ll 1$. In the presence of an additional lattice, a fractal phase diagram [2] emerges with Mott-insulating phases at any rational filling fraction. [1] see e.g. H. Weimer, R. L\"ow, T. Pfau, and H. P. B\"uchler; Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 250601 (2008) [2] F. J. Burnell, M. M. Parish, N. R. Cooper, and S. L. Sondhi; Phys. Rev. B 80, 174519 (2009)

*We gratefully acknowledge financial support by the DFG through the SFB TR 49 project.

Authors

  • Dominik Muth

    • FB Physik und Forschungszentrum OPTIMAS, TU Kaiserslautern, Germany
    • Fachbereich Physik und Forschungszentrum OPTIMAS, TU Kaiserslautern, Germany

  • Achim Lauer

    • Fachbereich Physik und Forschungszentrum OPTIMAS, TU Kaiserslautern, Germany

  • Johannes Otterbach

    • Physics Department, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
    • Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
    • Physics Department, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
    • Harvard University

  • Michael Fleischhauer

    • Department of Physics and Research Center OPTIMAS, TU Kaiserslautern
    • FB Physik und Forschungszentrum OPTIMAS, TU Kaiserslautern, Germany
    • Fachbereich Physik und Forschungszentrum OPTIMAS, TU Kaiserslautern, Germany
    • Dept. of Physics, University of Kaiserslautern
    • University of Kaiserslautern