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We study the appearance of correlated many-body ground states in an ensemble of atoms driven into a strongly interacting Rydberg state. The ground state of the Hamiltonian describing the driven
system exhibits a second order quantum phase transition from a paramagnetic to a crystalline phase [1]. We derive a mean-field theory
for the phase transition and find excellent agreement with both numerical simulations and experimental results [2]. Special focus is
laid to one-dimensional lattice systems, where additional commensurate-incommensurate phase transitions can be studied.
[1] H. Weimer, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 250601 (2008). [2] R. Löw et al., Phys. Rev. A 80, 033422 (2009). |
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