Strong interactions in alkaline-earth Rydberg ensembles

Ultra-cold atoms in optical lattices provide a versatile and robust platform to study fundamental condensed-matter physics problems and have applications in quantum optics as well as quantum information processing. For many of these applications, Rydberg atoms (atoms excited to large principal quantum numbers) are ideal due to its long coherence times and strong interactions. However, one of the pre-requisite for such applications is identical confinement of ground state atoms with Rydberg atoms. This is challenging for conventionally used alkali atoms. In this thesis, I discuss the potential of using alkaline-earth Rydberg atoms for many-body physics by implementing simultaneous trapping for the relevant internal states. In particular, I consider a scheme for generating multi-particle entanglement and explore charge transport in a one dimensional atomic lattice