We demonstrate the coherent excitation of a mesoscopic ensemble of about 100ultracold atoms to Rydberg states by driving Rabi oscillations from the atomicground state. We employ a dedicated beam shaping and optical pumping scheme tocompensate for the small transition matrix element. We study the excitation ina weakly interacting regime and in the regime of strong interactions. Whenincreasing the interaction strength by pair state resonances we observe anincreased excitation rate through coupling to high angular momentum states.This effect is in contrast to the proposed and previously observedinteraction-induced suppression of excitation, the so-called dipole blockade.
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