We investigate quantum many-body effects on Rydberg excitons in cuprous oxide induced by the surrounding electron-hole plasma. Line shifts and widths are calculated by full diagonalisation of the plasma Hamiltonian and compared to results in first order perturbation theory, and the oscillator strength of the exciton lines is analysed.
High-lying Rydberg states of Mott-Wannier excitons are receiving considerable interest due to the possibility of adding long-range interactions to the physics of exciton-polaritons. Here, we study Rydberg excitation in bulk synthetic cuprous oxide gr
own by the optical float zone technique and compare the result with natural samples. X-ray characterization confirms both materials are mostly single crystal, and mid-infrared transmission spectroscopy revealed little difference between synthetic and natural material. The synthetic samples show principal quantum numbers up to $n=10$, exhibit additional absorption lines, plus enhanced spatial broadening and spatial inhomogeneity. Room temperature and cryogenic photoluminescence measurements reveal a significant excess of copper vacancies in the synthetic material. These measurements provide a route towards achieving mbox{high-$n$} excitons in synthetic crystals, opening a route to scalable quantum devices.
We develop a many-body approach to the behavior of exciton bound states and the conduction electron band edge in a surrounding electron-hole plasma with a focus on the absorption spectrum of Rydberg excitons in cuprous oxide. The interplay of band ed
ge and exciton levels is analyzed numerically, whereby the self-consistent solution is compared to the semiclassical Debye approximation. Our results provide criteria which allow to verify or rule out the different band edge models against future experimental data.
For an ultra-dense exciton gas in cuprous oxide (Cu$_2$O), exciton-exciton interactions are the dominant cause of exciton decay. This study demonstrates that the accepted Auger recombination model overestimates the exciton decay rate following intens
e two photon excitation. Two exciton decay is relevant to the search for collective quantum behavior of excitons in bulk systems. These results suggest the existence of a new high density regime of exciton behavior.
We find exponentially many exact quantum many-body scar states in a two-dimensional PXP model -- an effective model for a two-dimensional Rydberg atom array in the nearest-neighbor blockade regime. Such scar states are remarkably simple valence bond
solids despite being at effectively infinite temperature, and thus strongly violate the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. Given a particular boundary condition, such eigenstates have integer-valued energies. Moreover, certain charge-density-wave initial states give rise to strong oscillations in the Rydberg excitation density after a quantum quench and tower-like structures in their overlaps with eigenstates.
The strong interaction between Rydberg atoms can be used to control the strength and character of the interatomic interaction in ultracold gases by weakly dressing the atoms with a Rydberg state. Elaborate theoretical proposals for the realization of
various complex phases and applications in quantum simulation exist. Also a simple model has been already developed that describes the basic idea of Rydberg dressing in a two-atom basis. However, an experimental realization has been elusive so far. We present a model describing the ground state of a Bose-Einstein condensate dressed with a Rydberg level based on the Rydberg blockade. This approach provides an intuitive understanding of the transition from pure twobody interaction to a regime of collective interactions. Furthermore it enables us to calculate the deformation of a three-dimensional sample under realistic experimental conditions in mean-field approximation. We compare full three-dimensional numerical calculations of the ground state to an analytic expression obtained within Thomas-Fermi approximation. Finally we discuss limitations and problems arising in an experimental realization of Rydberg dressing based on our experimental results. Our work enables the reader to straight forwardly estimate the experimental feasibility of Rydberg dressing in realistic three-dimensional atomic samples.