Dipole-Dipole Interactions in a Frozen Rydberg Gas

Abstract : We investigate here the characteristics of energy resonant dipole-dipole interactions between Rydberg atoms in Magneto-Optical Trap. These resonant processes occur in a kinetic energy regime in which the atoms may be considered stationary over the time scale of the experiment. Coupled with the long range of the interactions considered, this leads to multi-atom interactions becoming non-negligible. A simple model is outlined to provide insight into the effects of these multi-atom interactions which lead to some interesting behaviors. Experiments which examine the broadening of the dipole-dipole resonances and observe the time dependence of the interaction signal are discussed. Examination of adiabatic character of population transfer caused by slewing across the resonance is discussed in another experiment, as is the scaling behavior of the resonance linewidths and on-resonant signal growth rates. We end by discussing an experiment which takes advantage of some of the characteristics of these interactions to measure the tensor polarizability of Rydberg states of Rb.