Non-adiabatic motional effects and dissipative blockade for Rydberg atoms excited from optical lattices or microtraps

Understand

The laser-excitation of Rydberg atoms in ultracold gases is often described assuming that the atomic motion is frozen during the excitation time.

• We show that this frozen gas approximation can break down for atoms that are held in optical lattices or microtraps.
• In particular, we show that the excitation dynamics is in general strongly affected by mechanical forces among the Rydberg atoms as well as the spread of the atomic wavepacket in the confining potential.
• This causes decoherence in the excitation dynamics - resulting in a dissipative blockade effect - that renders the Rydberg excitation inefficient even in the anti-blockade regime.