On the adiabatic preparation of spatially-ordered Rydberg excitations of atoms in a one-dimensional optical lattice by laser frequency sweeps

We examine the adiabatic preparation of crystalline phases of Rydberg excitations in a one-dimensional lattice gas by frequency sweep of the excitation laser, as proposed by Pohl et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 043002 (2010)] and recently realized experimentally by Schau{ss} et al. [Science 347, 1455 (2015)]. We find that the preparation of crystals of a few Rydberg excitations in a unitary system of several tens of atoms requires exceedingly long times for the adiabatic following of the ground state of the system Hamiltonian. Using quantum stochastic (Monte-Carlo) wavefunction simulations, we show that realistic decay and dephasing processes affecting the atoms during the preparation lead to a final state of the system that has only a small overlap with the target crystalline state. Yet, the final number and highly sub-Poissonian statistics of Rydberg excitations and their spatial order are little affected by the relaxations.