Spontaneous emission of a sodium Rydberg atom close to an optical nanofibre

We report on numerical calculations of the spontaneous emission rate of a Rydberg-excited sodium atom in the vicinity of an optical nanobre. In particular, we study how this rate varies with the distance of the atom to the bre, the bre's radius, the symmetry s or p of the Rydberg state as well as its principal quantum number. We nd that a fraction of the spontaneously emitted light can be captured and guided along the bre. This suggests that such a setup could be used for networking atomic ensembles, manipulated in a collective way due to the Rydberg blockade phenomenon.