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Finite-size effects in strongly interacting Rydberg gases

The scaling of the number of Rydberg excitations in a laser-driven cloud of atoms with the interaction strength is found to be affected by the finite size of the system. The scaling predicted by a theoretical model is compared with results extracted from a numerical many-body simulation. We find that the numerically obtained scaling exponent in general does not agree with the analytical prediction. By individually testing the assumptions leading to the theoretical prediction using the results from the numerical analysis, we identify the origin of the deviations, and explain it as arising from the finite size of the system. Furthermore, finite-size effects in the pair correlation function $g^{(2)}$ are predicted. Finally, in larger ensembles, we find that the theoretical predictions and the numerical results agree, provided that the system is sufficiently homogeneous.