Rydberg states provide wonderful platforms for studying dynamics and correlations in quantum systems with ultracold atoms. Our experiments with strontium ultralong-range Rydberg molecules (ULRRM) have demonstrated that the photo-association rate of ULRRMs can be used to probe non-local spatial correlations in a quantum gas, such as bunching and antibunching of bosonic and fermionic isotopes of strontium gases [1]. More recently, we also resolved rotational states of ULRRMs and used them to observe the s-wave suppression of the 86Sr-86Sr pair (with scattering length as=823a0). [2]
I will also share in this talk our efforts and results of constructing synthetic dimensions with Rydberg atomic states. We realized the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model used six 3S1 Rydberg levels with microwave frequencies resonantly connecting adjacent pairs. Edge-to-edge long-range tunneling and bulk-population oscillations, characteristic behaviors of the topological phase, were observed in the measured population evolution [3]. The strong/weak tunneling ratio is also scanned to probe the topological-trivial phase transition in the SSH model through measurements of the band structure and the winding number [4].
[1] Whalen, et al., Phys. Rev. A 100, 011402(R) (2019)
[2] Lu, et al., Phys. Rev. A 106, 022809 (2022)
[3] Lu, et al., Phys. Rev. A 109, 032801 (2024)
[4] Lu, et al., Phys. Rev. A 110, 023318 (2024)