Integrating Twisted Cavities and Rydberg Atoms for Photonic Quantum Matter

Twisted optical cavities are a powerful tool to shape the photonic energy landscape and create artificial gauge fields for light. We combine these optical tools with ultracold atoms to imbue photons with interactions by turning them into quasiparticles called cavity Rydberg polaritons. Achievable size of many-body states using this hybrid platform is limited by the number of degenerate optical cavity modes as well as atomic density. We describe our recent efforts in designing and building a highly integrated apparatus containing a twisted resonator using intra-cavity lenses, a twisted build-up cavity for Rydberg excitation light, electric field control as well as in-vacuum alignment capabilities. With this system combining quantum optics techniques and Rydberg atoms we want to realize and probe highly correlated quantum phases of matter.