Rydberg atoms inside hollow-core photonic crystal fibre

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Rydberg atoms have extreme properties. In particular the large polarizabilities lead to extremely strong interactions, which can be exploited to produce optical non-linearities. In this project we will study hot atoms inside hollow core fibres and various interaction mechanisms between highly excited Rydberg atoms. The combination of well collimated intense light fields, large atomic densities and optical depths, simple geometries and the integration of metallic structures is ideally suited to employ optical bistabilities for narrowband THz generation and detection. In the bistable phase emerge large fields in the microwave or THz domain. We expect that with a suitable geometry we can produce mW powers above one THz, which is usually not available with commercial cw-systems. In a next step we want to use the steep spectroscopic feature as a sensitive probe for THz radiation. The collective response of the ensemble will lead to a very sensitive THz Power-meter. Finally we will study the effect of the van-der-Waals interaction and how this can be exploited, in a similar manner as it is done with ultracold gases, for nonlinear optics.