Mesoscopic Rydberg Impurity in an Atomic Quantum Gas

Abstract

Giant impurity excitations are powerful probes for exploring new regimes of far out of equilibrium dynamics in few-and many-body quantum systems, and in situ observations of correlations. Motivated by recent experimental progress in spectroscopic studies of Rydberg excitations in ultracold atoms, we develop a new theoretical approach for describing multiscale dynamics of Rydberg excitations in quantum Bose gases. We find that the crossover from few-to many-body dynamics manifests in a dramatic change in spectral profile from resolved molecular lines to broad Gaussian distributions representing a superpolaronic state in which many atoms bind to the Rydberg impurity. We discuss signatures of this crossover in the temperature and density dependence of the spectra.