Progress Towards Rydberg Dynamics in an Ultra-Cold Atomic Ensemble and the Visualisation of Arbitrary Qutrit States

This thesis describes the processes performed to restore an existing platform for Rydberg quantum optics to experimental readiness. The setup itself is initially described before the the process of re-evacuation of the experimental chamber following a vacuum break is detailed. Once ultra-high vacuum conditions had been restored, work was conducted to lower the temperature of the atomic cloud, produced by a Magneto-Optical Trap and further cooled by sub-Doppler cooling. The temperatures of the clouds produced were optimised down to 33.6 ± 1.3μK measured by Time of Flight absorption imaging following the ballistic expansion of the cooled clouds. Separate from the experiment, this thesis outlines the development of a visualisation method, bearing resemblance to the Bloch sphere for qubits, for three level qutrits. This visualisation method encapsulates all 8 dimensions required to describe any qutrit density matrix, which is a linear sum of the 8 Gell-Mann matrices. The dynamics of a qutrit can be well articulated in an easy to interpret fashion with this visualisation, and a set of common atomic physics processes are modelled to highlight the dynamics that can be conveyed via this framework.