Investigation of dephasing rates in an interacting Rydberg gas

Raitzsch, U.; Heidemann, R.; Weimer, H.; Bendkowsky, V.; Butscher, B.; Kollmann, P.; Löw, R.; Büchler, H. P.; Pfau, T.

Investigation of dephasing rates in an interacting Rydberg gas

Authors

Description

We experimentally and theoretically investigate the dephasing rates of the coherent evolution of a resonantly driven pseudo spin emersed in a reservoir of pseudo spins. The pseudo spin is realized by optically exciting 87 Rb atoms to a Rydberg state. Hence, the upper spin states are coupled via the strong van der Waals interaction. Two different experimental techniques to measure the dephasing rates are shown: the 'rotary echo' technique known from nuclear magnetic resonance physics and electromagnetically induced transparency. The experiments are performed in a dense frozen Rydberg gas, either confined in a magnetic trap or in an optical dipole trap. Additionally, a numerical simulation is used to analyse the dephasing in the rotary echo experiments.
13 pages, 5 figures