Observation of effects of inter-atomic interaction on Autler–Townes splitting in cold Rydberg atoms

Abstract

We demonstrate the effect of inter-atomic interaction in highly excited Rydberg atoms via Autler–Townes (AT) splitting in cold atoms. We measure the AT splitting of the transition of 87Rb atoms arising due to the strong coupling of the transition via the cooling beams used for the magneto-optical trap (MOT). The AT splitting is probed using a weakly coupled transition from state to highly excited Rydberg states for a wide range of principal quantum numbers. We observe the AT splitting via trap-loss spectroscopy in the MOT by scanning the probe frequency. We observe a drastic increase in the broadening of the AT splitting signal as a result of interaction-induced dephasing effect in cold Rydberg atoms for highly excited Rydberg states with principal quantum number n 100. We explain our observations using theoretical modeling and numerical simulations based on the Lindblad Master equation. We find a good agreement of the results of the numerical simulation with the experimental measurements.