Efficient Excitation of a Symmetric Collective Atomic State with a Single-Photon Through Dipole Blockade

In the famous quantum communication scheme developed by Duan et al.L.M.Duan,M.D.Lukin,J.I.Cirac,and P.Zoller,Nature(London) 414(2001) 413],the probability of successful generating a symmetric collective atomic state with a single-photon emitted have to be far smaller than 1 to obtain an acceptable entangled state.Based on strong dipole-dipole interaction between two Rydberg atoms,two simultaneous excitations in an atomic ensemble are greatly suppressed,which makes it possible to excite a mesoscopic cold atomic ensemble into a near-ideal singly-excited symmetric collective state accompanied by a signal-photon with near unity success probability.