Southwest Quantum Information and Technology

State insensitive trapping for ground and Rydberg atoms

Presenting Author: Jacob Lampen, University of Michigan
Contributing Author(s): Huy Nguyen, Matthew Winchester, Lin Li, Paul Berman, Alex Kuzmich

We create state insensitive trapping potentials for ground and Rydberg atoms by using optical lattices having wavelengths between \(1012nm\) and \(1026nm\) that correspond to magic wavelengths for states having principal quantum numbers between \(n=30\) and \(n=65\). The spatial confinement provided by the lattice results in a suppression of motional (Doppler) dephasing. The retrieved signal of the collective atomic coherence displays oscillations at the axial trap frequency, with trap lifetimes in excess of 20 microseconds. These are an order of magnitude longer than those observed for ballistically expanding atomic clouds. The observed values of magic detunings are found to be in good agreement with the values predicted theoretically and scale approximately as \((n-3.13)^{-3}\). The enhanced ground Rydberg coherence times open new opportunities for precise creation and manipulation of entangled many-atom states and for interfacing these states with quantum optical fields.

(Session 13 : Saturday from 3:15pm-3:45pm)