Optically imprinted Rydberg lattice

Creating ultracold Rydberg atoms in lattices imprinted with a spatial light modulator offers the possibility to simulate quantum processes. Strong dipole forces between Rydberg atoms provide the required correlations between lattice sites. With a high ground-state atomic density per lattice site, blockade phenomenon may induce single Rydberg atom occupancy per lattice site. Readout of resulting patterns requires single-atom detection with spatial resolution. The grand challenge is to create systems of interacting Rydberg atoms with scalability. So far, we have achieved spatial imaging of Rydberg atoms using ion optics and incorporated in-vacuo aberration correction for imprinted light patterns. Presently, we are studying the effect of dipole blockade on Rydberg excitation statistics. For this we have set up a tuneable Rydberg excitation laser system using an ultra stable reference. Measurements of spatial correlation functions show that achieving a blockade radius of 10 μm is possible. Combined with a dark-spot MOT, this is sufficient to achieve precisely one Rydberg atom per lattice site.