Rydberg atoms in astrophysics

Bell's inequalities for Rydberg atoms

The analogy between two-level atoms and spins is used to show that Rydberg atoms provide a new medium through which Bell's inequalities may be studied. The low-efficiency particle detectors that have been used in experiments to test Bell's inequalities are replaced by nearly 100% efficient state-selective ionizers in Rydberg-atom experiments. Two methods for producing correlated states of pairs...

Detecting photons with Rydberg atoms

Unlike all other quantum technology platforms, photonics encodes quantum information without noise at room temperature, without the need for high vacuum, pumping / cooling, or magnetic / electrical shielding. Frustratingly, these advantages must be sacrificed when high-efficiency photon counting is required, as >95% photo-detection efficiency is only available via superconducting photo-detector...

Quantum information with Rydberg atoms

Rydberg atoms with principal quantum number n 1 have exaggerated atomic properties including dipole-dipole interactions that scale as n4 and radiative lifetimes that scale as n3. It was proposed a decade ago to take advantage of these properties to implement quantum gates between neutral atom qubits. The availability of a strong long-range interaction that can be coherently turned on and off is...

Rydberg atoms in low - frequency fields

Conductance fluctuations in microwave-driven Rydberg atoms

– We draw and quantitatively support a parallel between conductance fluctuations in one-dimensional disordered solids and fluctuations of lifetimes of hydrogen atoms in microwave fields. In particular, we numerically analyze the statistics of scaled atomic resonance widths in the localized regime and we find a lognormal distribution, quantitatively consistent with the theory of Anderson localiz...