Electrical readout for coherent phenomena involving Rydberg atoms in thermal vapor cells.
Phys Rev Lett
; 110(12): 123002, 2013 Mar 22.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-25166801
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.