Abstract
We study the effect of resonances associated with complex molecular interaction of Rydberg atoms on Rydberg blockade. We show that densely-spaced molecular potentials between doubly-excited atomic pairs become unavoidably resonant with the optical excitation at short interatomic separations. Such molecular resonances limit the coherent control of individual excitations in Rydberg blockade. As an illustration, we compute the molecular interaction potentials of Rb atoms near the $100s$ states asymptote to characterize such detrimental molecular resonances, determine the resonant loss rate to molecules and inhomogeneous light shifts. Techniques to avoid the undesired effect of molecular resonances are discussed.
Highlights
Rydberg blockade [1,2,3,4] has recently emerged as a promising method for creating and manipulating quantum states of light and matter in applications ranging from quantum information processing [5,6,7] to quantum nonlinear optics [8, 9]
The key idea is that strong interaction between Rydberg atoms can be used, under certain conditions, to block the states with more than one excited atoms
Multiple Rydberg excitations are suppressed due to level shifts caused by strong long-range interactions between Rydberg atoms
Summary
Rydberg blockade [1,2,3,4] has recently emerged as a promising method for creating and manipulating quantum states of light and matter in applications ranging from quantum information processing [5,6,7] to quantum nonlinear optics [8, 9]. Multiple Rydberg excitations are suppressed due to level shifts caused by strong long-range interactions between Rydberg atoms This mechanism enables performing quantum logic operations between atom pairs and manipulate collective many-body states of N -atom ensemble[1]. We demonstrate that the very same interactions that cause the level shifts required for blockade have detrimental effects due to a large state density (number of levels per energy interval) of Rydberg states resulting in a plethora of closely-spaced molecular potentials Some of these potentials may become, at specific interatomic separation, resonant with the driving field causing excitations to unwanted doubly-excited Rydberg states. We discuss techniques to suppress the deleterious molecular resonance effects
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