title: Strongly interacting Rydberg excitations of a cold atomic gas.
abstract: Highly excited Rydberg atoms have many exaggerated properties. In particular, the interaction strength between such atoms can be varied over an enormous range. In a mesoscopic ensemble, such strong, long-range interactions can be used for fast preparation of desired many-particle states. We generated Rydberg excitations in an ultra-cold atomic gas and subsequently converted them into light. As the principal quantum number n was increased beyond ~70, no more than a single excitation was retrieved from the entire mesoscopic ensemble of atoms. These results hold promise for studies of dynamics and disorder in many-body systems with tunable interactions and for scalable quantum information networks.
authors.affiliation: School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0430, USA.
authors.forename: Y O
authors.initials: YO
authors.lastname: Dudin
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kuzmich