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• Alain Aspect
• Thomas Bruns
• Bianca Dittrich
• Frank Krauss
• Ute Leidig
• Harald Lück
• Markus Müller
• Yvonne Pachmayer
• Ana Peón-Nieto
• Ulrich Schwarz
• Marc Schumann
• Team d-fine
• Team Sun
• Shannon Whitlock
• Sandro Wimberger

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Many-body physics with Rydberg atoms

Abstract:

The interaction of many simple elements, each obeying basic rules, often produces remarkably rich and complex new behaviour. Atoms cooled to near absolute zero temperature and prepared in highly-excited states, called ultracold Rydberg atoms, have extreme properties which can give rise to completely new many-body effects. In particular, because of the weak binding of the outer electron to the nucleus, Rydberg atoms react very sensitively to external fields, and experience strong interactions with one another, even over macroscopic length scales leading to the emergence of strong spatial and temporal quantum correlations. By interfacing laser light with Rydberg atoms, one can produce new hybrid states of atoms and photons and engineer synthetic many-body quantum systems with total control over the microscopic and macroscopic degrees of freedom. For example, quantum state changing interactions between Rydberg atoms are similar to those found in complex molecules, offering a model system to study the nature of dipole-mediated excitation transport in a controlled environment. With current experiments it is possible to manipulate atoms and light at the quantum level and watch many-body quantum systems evolve under the influence of long-range and tuneable interactions.

In this lecture series I will introduce the physics of ultracold Rydberg gases and discuss the latests results of the field, including the creation of strongly-correlated quantum systems, nonlinear optics at the level of single photons, dynamics of open quantum systems and dipolar spin and energy transport.