title: Imaging of Rydberg Impurities in an Ultracold Atomic Gas
creator: Gavryusev, Vladislav
subject: ddc-000
subject: 000 Generalities, Science
subject: ddc-500
subject: 500 Natural sciences and mathematics
subject: ddc-530
subject: 530 Physics
description: This thesis investigates how a single highly excited atom, called Rydberg atom, can be optically imaged. Direct detection methods based on the scattering of light are hardly applicable due to the small scattering rate of the ground to Rydberg state transition. Instead, a cloud of ground state atoms, normally absorptive, is rendered transparent using electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), involving an auxiliary probe Rydberg state. The cloud acts as a contrast medium, whose optical response is locally perturbed by the strong Rydberg-Rydberg interaction between the probe and the Rydberg impurity which we want to detect. This perturbation restores absorption within a small volume around the impurity, readily detected and  spatially resolved on a camera. We call this technique Interaction Enhanced Imaging (IEI). To implement IEI we characterize the optical response of the EIT contrast  medium in absence of interactions. By combining measurements of the spatially resolved optical spectrum and of the total Rydberg atom number, we can reconstruct  the full one-body density matrix of the three-level system. Next, we excite |nS> or |nP> states and, using IEI, we demonstrate spatially resolved imaging, enabling us  to study dipolar energy transport. To reach single impurity sensitivity we investigate our current detection fidelity and characterize the signal and noise contributions in  IEI. We model our interacting system, finding good agreement with experimental data. Based on this model, we predict combinations of Rydberg states for which single-shot single impurity sensitivity should be possible in future experiments.
date: 2016
type: Dissertation
type: info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis
type: NonPeerReviewed
format: application/pdf
identifier: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserverhttps://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/22429/1/PhD-thesis_VG_PDFA_1B.pdf
identifier: DOI:10.11588/heidok.00022429
identifier: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heidok-224291
identifier:   Gavryusev, Vladislav  (2016) Imaging of Rydberg Impurities in an Ultracold Atomic Gas.  [Dissertation]     
relation: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/22429/
rights: info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
rights: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/help/license_urhg.html
language: eng