Fine Structure of the Rydberg Blockade Zone

Abstract

A spatial structure of the zone blocked by the dipolar electric field of a Rydberg atom is calculated taking into account a possibility of excitation to the states with neighboring values of the principal quantum number. As a result, it was found that the blocked zone represents a number of co-centric spherical shells rather than a solid ball, and the respective pair correlation function should have additional maxima at small interparticle distances.