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Updated: Aug 22, 2026

Cooling an Optically Trapped Ultracold Fermi Gas by Periodical Driving
Published on: March 30, 2017
Local blockade of Rydberg excitation in an ultracold gas
D Tong1, S M Farooqi, J Stanojevic
1Physics Department, University of Connecticut, Storrs 06269, USA.
Abstract:
In the laser excitation of ultracold atoms to Rydberg states, we observe a dramatic suppression caused by van der Waals interactions. This behavior is interpreted as a local excitation blockade: Rydberg atoms strongly inhibit excitation of their neighbors. We measure suppression, relative to isolated atom excitation, by up to a factor of 6.4. The dependences of this suppression on both laser irradiance and atomic density are in good agreement with a mean-field model. These results are an important step towards using ultracold Rydberg atoms in quantum information processing.
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