title: Collective many-body interaction in Rydberg dressed atoms.
abstract: We present a method to control the shape and character of the interaction potential between cold atomic gases by weakly dressing the atomic ground state with a Rydberg level. For increasing particle densities, a crossover takes place from a two-particle interaction into a collective many-body interaction, where the dipole-dipole or van der Waals blockade phenomenon between the Rydberg levels plays a dominant role. We study the influence of these collective interaction potentials on a Bose-Einstein condensate and present the optimal parameters for its experimental detection.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Theoretical Physics III, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany.
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Honer
authors.forename: Hendrik
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Weimer
authors.forename: Tilman
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Pfau
authors.forename: Hans Peter
authors.initials: HP
authors.lastname: Büchler