title: Electrical readout for coherent phenomena involving Rydberg atoms in thermal vapor cells.
abstract: We present a very sensitive and scalable method to measure the population of highly excited Rydberg states in a thermal vapor cell of rubidium atoms. We detect the Rydberg ionization current in a 5 mm electrically contacted cell. The measured current is found to be in qualitatively good agreement with a theory for the Rydberg population based on a master equation for the three-level problem, including an ionization channel and the full Doppler distributions at the corresponding temperatures. The signal-to-noise ratio of the current detection is substantially better than that of purely optical techniques.
authors.affiliation: 5. Physikalisches Institut, Universität Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 57, 70550 Stuttgart, Germany.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Barredo
authors.affiliation: 5. Physikalisches Institut, Universität Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 57, 70550 Stuttgart, Germany.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kübler
authors.affiliation: 5. Physikalisches Institut, Universität Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 57, 70550 Stuttgart, Germany.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Daschner
authors.affiliation: 5. Physikalisches Institut, Universität Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 57, 70550 Stuttgart, Germany.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Löw
authors.affiliation: 5. Physikalisches Institut, Universität Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 57, 70550 Stuttgart, Germany.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Pfau