Coherent Population Trapping with Controlled Interparticle Interactions

We investigate coherent population trapping in a strongly interacting ultracold Rydberg gas. Despite the strong van der Waals interactions and interparticle correlations, we observe the persistence of a resonance with subnatural linewidth at the single-particle resonance frequency as we tune the interaction strength. This narrow resonance cannot be understood within a mean-field description of the strong Rydberg–Rydberg interactions. Instead, a many-body density matrix approach, accounting for the dynamics of interparticle correlations, is shown to reproduce the observed spectral features.