Flexible Rydberg aggregates

Rydberg aggregates are assemblies of highly excited atoms, where all atoms experience strong dipole-dipole interactions. Due to their simple structure, it makes them a fertile platform to study the link between motion and energy and entanglement transport, enabled via dipole-dipole interactions. The transport can be almost coherent, since the quantum properties in Rydberg interacting systems are maintained on the relevant time and length scales. This is in contrast to more complex systems, such as the light harvesting apparatus of plants, where due to environmental decoherence, the transfer of energy from absorbed photons within the apparatus can be described also classically. Another feature of Rydberg aggregates is that electronic excitation and atomic motion can propagate as a combined pulse, a so called exciton pulse. We identified structural elements in flexible Rydberg aggregates that significantly affect exciton dynamics, enabling coherent splitting of an exciton pulse, control of its propagation direction and coherence properties.