| When the atoms in an ultracold gas are excited to weakly bound Rydberg states they can interact strongly over the several micron distances separating them. In many cases this interaction can proceed quickly enough that the cold atoms move very little during the experiment, resulting in a system closely resembling an amorphous solid, but on a greatly magnified scale. One advantage of this system is the precision with which the internal structure of the atoms as well as their spatial arrangement can be controlled. In this talk I will present some recent results in which we focus on control of the spatial arrangement of the atoms and its effect on the resonant exchange of energy among atoms. |
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