Rabi flopping between ground and Rydberg states with dipole-dipole atomic interactions

We demonstrate Rabi flopping of small numbers of \(\rm{^{87}Rb}\) atoms between ground and Rydberg states with \(n\le 43\). Coherent population oscillations are observed for single atom flopping, while the presence of two or more atoms decoheres the oscillations. We show that these observations are consistent with van der Waals interactions of Rydberg atoms.