Progress towards deterministic generation of entangled W-states of neutral atoms using Rydberg blockade

The symmetric singly-excited W-state plays a crucial role in many quantum information applications. This thesis presents experimental progress toward deterministic entangled W-state generation in mesoscopic Rubidium-87 ensembles using Rydberg blockade. A variety of Rydberg excitation protocols are applied to the situation of a blockaded ensemble of up to 20 atoms in a far off-resonance optical dipole trap (FORT). These protocols include ensemble Rabi oscillations, stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP), and coherent population trapping (CPT). Evidence will be presented for collective enhancement of Rabi frequencies, an effect that is a signature of coupling to a W-state. In addition to the symmetric W-state, an approach to the generation of multiple-atom Fock states will be presented that has resulted in highly sub-Poissonian and controllable population distributions. Atomic N = 1 and N = 2 Fock states are generated with efficiencies of 61% and 41%, respectively. Dissipative dynamics are predicted to play a pivotal role in the enhancement of single-Rydberg excitation efficiency in schemes such as STIRAP and CPT that rely on trapping population in a dark state. As a guide for preparing experiments that rely on such dissipation and as a way of comparing the experiments to theory, full density matrix simulations of these protocols are performed by obtaining numerical solutions to the master equation. Preliminary results are obtained for both STIRAP and CPT showing a clear blockade effect and single-Rydberg excitation probabilities of up to 57%.