Electromagnetically induced transparency of an interacting cold Rydberg ensemble

Abstract

We study electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) of a weakly interacting cold Rydberg gas. We show that for Rydberg states with principal quantum numbers in the range n = 19–26, the onset of interactions is manifest as a depopulation of the Rydberg state. In the limit of a weak probe where the depopulation effect is negligible, we observe no evidence of interaction-induced decoherence and obtain a narrow Rydberg dark resonance with a linewidth of <600 kHz.
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