Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Trapped Rydberg atoms are highly promising candidates for quantum science experiments. While several approaches have been put forward to exert (trapping) forces on isolated Rydberg atoms, a widely applicable lossless technique is lacking. This paper proposes a robust versatile alternative technique that avoids lifetime compromising losses. Our proposal leverages the vector polarizability, which is induced by nonlinearly polarized light and is shown to be several orders of magnitude larger than the usual scalar and tensor polarizabilities for commonly used alkali Rydberg series such as the $nS$, $nP$, and $nD$ series with principal quantum number $n$ as low as 30. The resulting force can be used to trap isolated Rydberg atoms over long times, which constitutes a key advance that is expected to impact quantum simulation applications, as well as to generate large light--Rydberg-atom hybrid states, which possess nontrivial position-dependent forces.
Source: Physical Review A
Authors: A. Bhowmik, D. Blume
Institution: University of Oklahoma
Language: English
Subfield: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: W. M. Keck Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W4410822751