Colloquia

Interactions between pairs of Rydberg atoms can be so strong that the energy level structure of one atom is dramatically altered by the presence of a second atom 10 microns away. This "Rydberg blockade" is predicted to allow conditional quantum manipulation of individual atoms based on the quantum state of a distant neighboring atom. When successful, the resulting entanglement process occurs without the atoms experiencing any significant interatomic forces. I will describe experiments at the University of Wisconsin that demonstrate blockade-conditioned coherent evolution of a single Rb atom based on the quantum state of a second atom 11 microns away. Extensions of these ideas to deterministic single atom and single photon sources with atomic ensembles will be presented.