Interacting Stationary Rydberg Polaritons in Two Dimensions

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) involving highlyexcited Rydberg states has become a powerful technique to mediatestrong synthetic interactions between single photons in an atomicmedium. Based upon our experimental and theoretical findings on thenature of the nonlinear, non-local susceptibility under Rydberg-EITconditions during the first funding period of the SPP GiRyd, wepropose to extend our investigations to stationary ground-statepolaritons which acquire interactions through a novel Rydbergdressingscheme. This approach will allow us to study the photondynamics in the two-dimensional geometry transverse to the lightpropagation, and thereby open the door to many-body phenomena byaccommodating unprecedentedly larger number of interactingphotons. Moreover, the use of stationary-light polaritons composed ofground-state excitations yields drastically improved coherenceproperties and enhanced interaction times, while the proposedRydberg-dressing scheme will provide a new level of interactioncontrol in Rydberg-EIT settings and make it possible to realizerepulsive photons for the first time in experiments. The proposedproject thus provides unique opportunities for the exploration of nonequilibriummany-body quantum dynamics and the emergence ofexotic quantum states of light, both in theory and experiment.