Experimental studies of the blackbody induced population migration in dissipative Rydberg systems

My work concerns the experimental study of many-body physics using ultracold atoms. Cold atoms experiments represent ideal quantum simulators and allow us to study the complete quantum dynamics of a system under investigation, once its Hamiltonian is known. Among the many implementations, Rydberg atoms, i.e., atoms excited to highly excited states, represent a suitable framework for simulating certain types of physics, such as absorbing state phase transitions and other non-equilibrium phenomena. In fact, Rydberg atoms can naturally implement dissipation through two radiative processes, which are the spontaneous decay and the blackbody induced transitions to neighboring Rydberg states, and its characterization is important for simulations. In my thesis I have developed an experimental method for measuring the lifetimes of high-lying Rydberg states, where the application of traditional techniques results impractical. For this purpose, a detailed characterization of the apparatus, of the detection system and of the electric fields acting on the atoms has been necessary. This measurement allows to distinguish between an initially populated Rydberg state, a target state, from all the other states which are populated through blackbody radiation, the support states. The measurement also allows to obtain the lifetime of the total ensemble of Rydberg atoms in the system. Through this measurement, it is possible to characterize the blackbody induced migration between Rydberg states.