Abstract

Highly excited atoms exhibit large long range dipole-dipole interaction, making them a perfect tool for studying strongly correlated quantum gases and for implementing basic elements for quantum computation with cold neutral atoms [1,2]. Here we present an experimental study of Rydberg excitations of rubidium Bose Einstein condensates loaded in a quasi-one dimensional potential (dipole trap) and in periodic potentials (optical lattices). The excitation of Rydberg atoms in periodic potentials is one of the possible paths towards reaching the scalability requirements in quantum computation devices, with quantum gates based on the dipole blockade effect [3,4].

© 2011 IEEE