Mesoscopic Rydberg Impurity in an Atomic Quantum Gas

Richard Schmidt, H. R. Sadeghpour, and E. Demler
Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 105302 – Published 10 March 2016
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Abstract

Giant impurity excitations are powerful probes for exploring new regimes of far out of equilibrium dynamics in few- and many-body quantum systems, and in situ observations of correlations. Motivated by recent experimental progress in spectroscopic studies of Rydberg excitations in ultracold atoms, we develop a new theoretical approach for describing multiscale dynamics of Rydberg excitations in quantum Bose gases. We find that the crossover from few- to many-body dynamics manifests in a dramatic change in spectral profile from resolved molecular lines to broad Gaussian distributions representing a superpolaronic state in which many atoms bind to the Rydberg impurity. We discuss signatures of this crossover in the temperature and density dependence of the spectra.

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  • Received 2 December 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.105302

© 2016 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Richard Schmidt1,2,*, H. R. Sadeghpour1, and E. Demler2

  • 1ITAMP, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
  • 2Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA

  • *Corresponding author. richard.schmidt@cfa.harvard.edu

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Issue

Vol. 116, Iss. 10 — 11 March 2016

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