Borromean three-body FRET in frozen Rydberg gases.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 26348821.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms9173 and PMC identifier 4569802.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Controlling the interactions between ultracold atoms is crucial for quantum simulation and computation purposes. Highly excited Rydberg atoms are considered in this prospect for their strong and controllable interactions known in the dipole-dipole case to induce non-radiative energy transfers between atom pairs, similarly to fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) in biological systems. Here we predict few-body FRET processes in Rydberg atoms and observe the first three-body resonance energy transfer in cold Rydberg atoms using cold caesium atoms. In these resonances, additional relay atoms carry away an energy excess preventing the two-body resonance, leading thus to a Borromean type of energy transfer. These few-body processes present strong similarities with multistep FRET between chromophores sometimes called donor-bridge-acceptor or superexchange. Most importantly, they generalize to any Rydberg atom and could lead to new implementations of few-body quantum gates or entanglement.