Electrical read out for coherent phenomena involving Rydberg atoms in   thermal vapor cells
  We present a very sensitive and scalable method to measure the population of highly excited Rydberg states in a thermal vapor cell of rubidium atoms. We detect the Rydberg ionization current in a 5 mm electrically contacted cell. The measured current is found to be in excellent agreement with a theory for the Rydberg population based on a master equation for the three level problem including an ionization channel and the full Doppler distributions at the corresponding temperatures. The signal-to-noise ratio of the current detection is substantially better than purely optical techniques. 
D. Barredo, H. K\"ubler, R. Daschner, R. L\"ow, and T. Pfau
physics.atom-ph quant-ph