Title: Rydberg excitation of cold atoms inside a hollow core fiber,
Abstract: We report on a versatile, highly controllable hybrid cold Rydberg atom fiber
interface, based on laser cooled atoms transported into a hollow core
Kagomé crystal fiber. Our experiments are the first to demonstrate the
feasibility of exciting cold Rydberg atoms inside a hollow core fiber and we
study the influence of the fiber on Rydberg electromagnetically induced
transparency (EIT) signals. Using a temporally resolved detection method to
distinguish between excitation and loss, we observe two different regimes of
the Rydberg excitations: one EIT regime and one regime dominated by atom loss.
These results are a substantial advancement towards future use of our system
for quantum simulation or information.