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arXiv:0910.0414 · Physical Review A

Atom detection in a two-mode optical cavity with intermediate coupling: Autocorrelation studies

D. G. Norris, Eric Cahoon, Luis A. Orozco

Published Oct 22, 2009• 15 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We use an optical cavity in the regime of intermediate coupling between atom and cavity mode to detect single moving atoms. Degenerate polarization modes allow excitation of the atoms in one mode and collection of spontaneous emission in the other while keeping separate the two sources of light; we obtain a higher confidence and efficiency of detection by adding cavity-enhanced Faraday rotation. Both methods greatly benefit from coincidence detection of photons, attaining fidelities in excess of 99% in less than $1\text{ }\ensuremath{\mu}\text{s}$. Detailed studies of the second-order intensity autocorrelation function of light from the signal mode reveal evidence of antibunched photon emissions and the dynamics of single-atom transits.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.80.043830

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We study self-sustained cavity emission from driven atoms in collective strong coupling. The cavity emission occurs over a wide range of atom-cavity and drive-laser detunings without any external input to the cavity mode. Second-order correlation measurements ${g}^{(2)}(\ensuremath{\tau})$ further reveal unanticipated phenomena in the observed cavity emission such as (1) damped oscillations at two frequencies and (2) significantly distinct ${g}^{(2)}(\ensuremath{\tau})$ for different polarization components. The intricate relation between cavity-emission intensity, drive-laser detuning, and atom-cavity detunings is explained. A possible mechanism for the damped oscillations with two frequency components in ${g}^{(2)}(\ensuremath{\tau})$ is suggested. Measurements show the existence of two separate polarization-decoupled mechanisms with distinct photon statistics, through which energy is transferred from the drive field to the cavity field. The statistical properties and mechanisms underlying cavity emission present valuable insights for extending nondestructive detection techniques to the regime of collective strong coupling.
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A single atom strongly coupled to a cavity mode is stored by three-dimensional confinement in blue-detuned cavity modes of different longitudinal and transverse order. The vanishing light intensity at the trap center reduces the light shift of all atomic energy levels. This is exploited to detect a single atom by means of a dispersive measurement with 95% confidence in 10 micros, limited by the photon-detection efficiency. As the atom switches resonant cavity transmission into cavity reflection, the atom can be detected while scattering about one photon.
A tutorial review is given on recent experiments performed with 1 ⩽ N ⩽ 110 atoms in a microscopic high-finesse optical cavity. The resonator has length 1 mm and finesse 80 000. The radiative properties of the strongly coupled atom-cavity system differ from those of the individual components. For example, spontaneous emission is reversible, the first excited state of the composite system splits into two levels and the intensity fluctuations of the light transmitted by the resonator are nonclassical. We observe photon-antibunching and sub-Poissonian photon statistics. In terms of practical applications, the system renders possible ( i ) the detection of single atoms with high sensitivity and ( ii ) optical bistability for a few atoms and photons only.
We study the light generated by spontaneous emission into a mode of a cavity QED system under weak excitation of the orthogonally polarized mode. Operating in the intermediate regime of cavity QED with comparable coherent and decoherent coupling constants, we find an enhancement of the emission into the undriven cavity mode by more than a factor of 18.5 over that expected by the solid angle subtended by the mode. A model that incorporates three atomic levels and two polarization modes quantitatively explains the observations.