Self-organization and stroboscopic dynamics of a driven Rydberg gas

Motivated by recent experiments observing signatures of self-organized criticality (SOC) in driven Rydberg ensembles, we develop a Langevin description to explore how SOC can emerge from the microscopic interactions in experimental Rydberg setups. We demonstrate that drift and diffusion of atoms arising from an inhomogeneous trapping potential capture the stroboscopic evolution observed in experiments. The trap dynamics induces a continuous reorganization of the atoms, which pins the central density to a critical point and gives rise to scale invariant excitation avalanches. We further discuss how additional external driving can be used to extend and manipulate the SOC avalanche dynamics. This offers a detailed perspective on how avalanche dynamics can be controlled in driven Rydberg gases.