Observation of collective excitation of two individual atoms in the Rydberg blockade regime
Prof. Antoine Browaeys (Institut d'Optique)

The dipole blockade between Rydberg atoms has been proposed as a basic tool in quantum infor- mation processing with neutral atoms. In this presentation, I will detail our recent experimental demonstration of the Rydberg blockade of two individual atoms separated by 4 µm. Moreover, I will show that, in this regime, the single atom excitation is enhanced by a collective two-atom behavior associated with the excitation of an entangled state. This observation is an important step towards the deterministic manipulation of entanglement of two or more atoms using the Rydberg dipole interaction.