Intrinsic Optical Bistability in a Strongly-Driven Rydberg Ensemble

Understand

We observe and characterize intrinsic optical bistability in a dilute Rydberg vapor.

• The bistability is characterized by sharp jumps between states of low and high Rydberg occupancy with jump up and down positions displaying hysteresis depending on the direction in which the control parameter is changed.
• We find that the shift in frequency of the jump point scales with the fourth power of the principal quantum number.
• Also, the width of the hysteresis window increases with increasing principal quantum number, before reaching a peak and then closing again.