1209.6550 (D. Barredo et al.)

Electrical read out for coherent phenomena involving Rydberg atoms in
thermal vapor cells    [PDF]

D. Barredo, H. Kübler, R. Daschner, R. Löw, T. Pfau

We present a very sensitive and scalable method to measure the population of highly excited Rydberg states in a thermal vapor cell of rubidium atoms. We detect the Rydberg ionization current in a 5 mm electrically contacted cell. The measured current is found to be in excellent agreement with a theory for the Rydberg population based on a master equation for the three level problem including an ionization channel and the full Doppler distributions at the corresponding temperatures. The signal-to-noise ratio of the current detection is substantially better than purely optical techniques.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.6550