Observation of effects of inter-atomic interaction on Autler–Townes splitting in cold Rydberg atoms

We demonstrate the effect of inter-atomic interaction in highly excited Rydberg atoms via Autler–Townes (AT) splitting in cold atoms. We measure the AT splitting of the $\{5S_{1/2}, F = 2\} \rightarrow \{5P_{3/2}, F^{^{\prime}} = 3\}$ transition of ^87 Rb atoms arising due to the strong coupling of...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Silpa Baburaj Sheela, Shovan Kanti Barik, Varna Shenoy, Soham Chandak, Rejish Nath, Sanjukta Roy
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IOP Publishing 2025-01-01
Series:New Journal of Physics
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Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/adf570
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Summary:We demonstrate the effect of inter-atomic interaction in highly excited Rydberg atoms via Autler–Townes (AT) splitting in cold atoms. We measure the AT splitting of the $\{5S_{1/2}, F = 2\} \rightarrow \{5P_{3/2}, F^{^{\prime}} = 3\}$ transition of ^87 Rb atoms arising due to the strong coupling of the transition via the cooling beams used for the magneto-optical trap (MOT). The AT splitting is probed using a weakly coupled transition from $\{5P_{3/2}, F^{^{\prime}} = 3\}$ state to highly excited Rydberg states for a wide range of principal quantum numbers $(n = 35-117)$ . We observe the AT splitting via trap-loss spectroscopy in the MOT by scanning the probe frequency. We observe a drastic increase in the broadening of the AT splitting signal as a result of interaction-induced dephasing effect in cold Rydberg atoms for highly excited Rydberg states with principal quantum number n   $\gt$  100. We explain our observations using theoretical modeling and numerical simulations based on the Lindblad Master equation. We find a good agreement of the results of the numerical simulation with the experimental measurements.
ISSN:1367-2630