Dr. Jun Rui

Dr. Jun Rui was awarded the first MPHQ Fellowship in October 2017. He is currently working as Post-Doc in Prof. Immanuel Bloch's group on quantum gas microscope of Bosonic atoms.

Research goal

The sub-nanoscale size of typical diatomic molecules hinders direct optical access to their constituents. Rydberg macrodimers, giant and pure long-range molecules consisting of two highly-excited Rydberg atoms, feature interatomic distances easily exceeding optical wavelengths. We have recently reported the direct microscopic observation and detailed characterization of such molecules in a gas of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice with our quantum gas microscopy. We plan to significantly enhance the optical coupling strength to such giant molecule states and enter into the coherent molecular excitation regime where the underlying many-body processes can be revealed. Besides that, we also aim to realize coherent dressed finite-range interactions between ground state atoms in the optical lattice.

Possible applications

Rydberg atoms provide a novel platform to engineer strong interatomic interactions even at distances of several micrometers. To gain access to the motional dynamics of ultracold atoms under the presence of such interactions, it was proposed to admix only a small Rydberg fraction to the ground state by off-resonantly coupling to a Rydberg state. Such a Rydberg dressing scheme would significantly reduce the decay rate due to the small Rydberg fraction, and a number of exotic new quantum phases arising from the interplay of motional dynamics and long-range interatomic interactions have been proposed. These emerged as a promising tool for Rydberg based quantum information processing, the quantum simulation of quantum magnets, and the realization of dipolar quantum gases.