Abstract:
We present here a brief review of our recent theoretical works on the quantum manipulation of cold Rydberg atoms. First we study slow-light propagation and storage in ensembles of massive Rydberg atoms driven into the regime of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). We find via numerical simulations that (i) sufficiently large cross-phase modulation can be attained for two slowly propagating signals, through all-optical polarization control of dipole blockade effect, with negligible loss and deformation; (ii) the output signal after a storage and retrieval process may exhibit an intriguing saturation effect accompanied with the inhomogeneous anti-bunching feature due to dipole blockade effect. Then we study cooperative dynamic evolutions of few Rydberg atoms arranged into 1D chains (pairs) and driven by a periodically modulated (continuous-wave) laser field. We find that (i) both in-phase dynamics with identical Rydberg populations and anti-phase dynamics with complementary Rydberg populations can be attained for two Rydberg atoms with distinguishable resonances; (ii) features of discrete time crystals, including time-translation-symmetry breaking, oscillation persistence, and period rigidity, may be observed for tens of Rydberg atoms in the non-equilibrium situations. These results should be instructive for further studies on quantum information processing and quantum many-body simulation with cold Rydberg atoms as a promising platform.
References:
[1] Jin-Hui Wu et al., EPL 120, 54002 (2017).
[2] Xue-Dong Tian et al., Phys. Rev. A 97, 043811 (2018).
[3] Chu-Hui Fan et al., submitted to Phys. Rev. A.
[4] Chu-Hui Fan et al., manuscript in preparation.
Biography:
Professor Jin-Hui Wu obtained his PhD degree in Physics from Jilin University in July 2003 and is now a full professor and the dean of School of Physics, Northeast Normal University. His research work mainly focuses on the theory of coherent interaction between cold atoms and light fields in various configurations and environments as well as potential applications of some novel phenomena and effects in quantum information processing. At the present time, he is mainly concerned about the coherent manipulation of cold Rydberg atoms exhibiting dipole-dipole interactions, and the optical realization of non- Hermitian physics using cold atomic clouds or lattices. So far, he has published more than 150 peer-reviewed papers in such famed physical journals as Physical Review Letters, Applied Physics Letters, Optics Letters, Optics Express, and Physical Review A. Some of his representative works on, e.g. spontaneously generated atomic coherence, stationary light pulses generation, asymmetric light scattering of non-Hermitian degeneracy, and electromagnetically induced transparency in Rydberg atoms, have been followed by others with great interests.
Seminar by the NYU-ECNU Institute of Physics at NYU Shanghai