Rydberg dressing traditionally refers to a technique where interactions between cold atoms are imprinted through the far off-resonant continuous-wave excitation of high-lying Rydberg states. Dipolar interactions between these electronic states are then translated into effective interactions among ground-state atoms. Motivated by recent experiments, we investigate two dressing protocols, in which Rydberg atoms are resonantly excited in a stroboscopic fashion. The first one is nonadiabatic, meaning Rydberg states are excited by short pulses. In this case, mechanical forces among Rydberg atoms result in electron-motion coupling, which generates effective multibody interactions. In the second, adiabatic protocol, Rydberg states are excited by smoothly varying laser pulses. We show that also, in this protocol, substantial multibody interactions emerge.

Close

PrevNext

View figure in article

• Cold gases in optical lattices
• Collective effects in quantum optics
• Cooling & trapping
• Dipolar Rydberg atoms
• Entanglement in quantum gases
• Optical lattices & traps
• Rydberg gases
• Spin-phonon coupling
• Ultrafast optics
• Ultrafast phenomena
• Vibronic effects
• van der Waals interaction
• Atomic systems
• Quantum many-body systems
• Rydberg atoms & molecules
• Trapped atoms