Slowing Down a Coherent Superposition of Circular Rydberg States of Strontium

Abstract: Rydberg alkaline earth atoms are promising tools for quantum simulation and metrology. When one of the two valence electrons is promoted to long-lived circular states, the second valence electron can be optically manipulated without significant autoionization. We harness this feature to demonstrate laser slowing of a thermal atomic beam of circular strontium atoms. By driving the main ion core 422 nm wavelength resonance, we observe a velocity reduction of 50 m/s without significant autoionization. We also show that a superposition of circular states undergoes very weak decoherence during the cooling process, up to the scattering of more than thousand photons. This robustness opens new perspectives for quantum simulations over long timescales with circular atoms, while simultaneously cooling their motional state. It makes it possible to mitigate the harmful effects of unavoidable heating due to spin-motion coupling during a quantum simulation.