Efficient photo-ionizing elimination of detrimental electric fields for Rydberg atoms

Rydberg atoms are highly sensitive to external electric fields due to their exaggerated electronic properties. This unique feature lays the foundation for many of their applications in quantum science. However, an uncontrolled stray electric field can be detrimental, severely degrading their quantum control. In this work, we demonstrate a universal scheme that relies on the efficient creation of an in-vacuum plasma source by photo-ionizing laser-cooled atoms to eliminate detrimental electric fields in a Rydberg-atom tweezer array platform, requiring only readily available resources. With this method, we began with a Stark-ionized Rydberg continuum spectrum caused by a large, unknown stray electric field and ultimately recovered stable, coherent excitation of an individual Rydberg state after fully eliminating the field. Our method is directly applicable to existing Rydberg-atom platforms and can also be useful in other experiments sensitive to stray electric fields.