Local and single atom resolved study of non-linear excitation dynamics and dissipation in off-resonantly driven Rydberg gases

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Rydberg atoms in optical lattices provide a unique platform for the study of quantum many-body physics. Distinct to other systems, strong long-range interactions govern the physics of such Rydberg lattice gases. In most experiments realized so far interaction effects stemmed from the long-distance van-der-Waals or dipole-dipole interaction between the Rydberg atoms. However, their two-body interaction potentials are extremely rich at short distances and provide a little explored resource for many-body physics.We plan to study this short-range physics in laser coupled Rydberg many-body systems with local detection of the Rydberg atoms. In particular we aim at the study of facilitated systems arising from the interplay of nonlinear excitation and dissipation. We will explore non-equilibrium dynamics in these systems and aim to link them to phenomena found in soft-matter systems, especially glasses. In the atomic system, not only the nonlinear excitation can be controlled by the choice of the Rydberg states and laser detuning, but also the dissipation can be tuned via controlled addition of laser phase noise or additional laser coupling to low lying states. We plan to study such dissipative systems not only in the classical, but also in the quantum regime.Our study will shed light on short-range dissipative processes in off resonantly coupled Rydberg gases. The understanding of these processes is required to realize Rydberg dressed systems in the continuum. These promise the implementation of long-range interacting quantum systems of mobile atoms, with the prospect of realizing and studying fascinating novel quantum states such as supersolids.Distinct to other available experimental platforms, we will study Rydberg physics starting with the perfectly ordered Mott insulating state of atoms in a single plane of an optical lattice. The small system sizes of up to 200 particles allow for a bottom up study of the arising many-body physics including the dimensional dependence by changing from one- to two-dimensional systems. We will use a local detection technique build on top of our rubidium-87 quantum gas microscope to observe the Rydberg atoms in situ with single lattice site resolution.This project clearly belongs to the many-body physics part of the GiRyd program. The combination of available technology in our experiment is unique within GiRyd in terms of preparation and detection capabilities enabling unique studies of dissipative many-body systems not possible in any other existing setup.