Rydberg Molecule Polaritons: Overcoming Dissociation via Strong Coupling

The coupling of an isolated quantum state to a continuum is typically associated with decoherence and decreased lifetime. In this presentation, I will demonstrate that Rydberg macrodimers, weakly bound pairs of Rydberg atoms, can overcome this dissipative mechanism and instead form bound states with the continuum of free motional states. This is enabled by the unique combination of extraordinarily slow vibrational motion in the molecular state and the optical coupling to a non-interacting continuum. Under conditions of strong coupling, we observe the emergence of distinct resonances where the macrodimer is hybridized with the continuum. For atoms arranged on a lattice, we predict molecules consisting of more than two atoms that appear in atom loss correlations in quantum gas microscopy. Our results present an intriguing light-mediated mechanism to control decoherence and bind multiatomic molecules using macrodimers.