Rydberg entanglement project

Experiment: Ashok Mohapatra, Charles Adams. Theory: Pruet Kalasuwan, Robert Potvliege.

	Rydberg - entanglement.
	The goal of the project is to produce entangled pairs of atoms by Rydberg excitation in an optical lattice. This work is supported by EPSRC Grant EP/D/037174/1.

	Rydberg - EIT.
	Traditionally Rydberg atoms are detected destructively by ripping them apart and detecting the resulting ion or electron. Recently, we have demonstrated direct optical detection of highly excited Rydberg states (with principal quantum number n=24-124) using electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), see Phys Rev Lett 98, 113003 (2007). A typical spectra is shown on the left. The EIT linewidth is of order 1 MHz.

	Electric field sensitivity.
	Rydberg energy levels are extremely sensitive to electric fields. Here we show that we can measure fields of less than 0.5 V/cm in a gas using the 44d state. The theoretical prediction of the Stark shifts (coloured lines) were calculated by Pruet Kalasuwan.