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arXiv:1305.2579 · Physical Review A

Collective strong coupling in multimode cavity QED

Arne Wickenbrock, M. Hemmerling, Gordon R. M. Robb, Clive Emary, Ferruccio Renzoni

Published Apr 15, 2013• 58 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study an atom-cavity system in which the cavity has several degenerate transverse modes. Mode-resolved cavity transmission spectroscopy reveals well-resolved atom-cavity resonances for several cavity modes, a signature of collective strong coupling for the different modes. Furthermore, the experiment shows that the cavity modes are coupled via the atomic ensemble contained in the cavity. The experimental observations are supported by a detailed theoretical analysis. The work paves the way to the use of interacting degenerate modes in cavity-based quantum information processing, where qubits corresponding to different cavity modes interact via an atom shared by the two modes. Our results are also relevant to the experimental realization of quantum spin glasses with ultracold atoms.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.87.043817

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We investigate the transmission spectrum of an optical cavity coupled with four-level atoms. Multiple normal-mode splitting peaks of the strongly coupled atom-cavity system are obtained as single cavity mode couples three separated atomic transitions simultaneously. We employ a confocal optical cavity and an ensemble of cold Rb-85 atoms for cavity quantum electrodynamics. We observe four normal-mode splitting peaks of the cavity transmission in the strong coupling regime due to collective enhancement of the atom-cavity coupling strength by ensemble of cold atoms. The experimental observations are consistent with the theoretical analysis. The multiple normal-mode excitation in the strongly coupled multi-level atom-cavity system may lead to practical application for realizing multi-channel all-optical devices.
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Here, we report an experimental realization of multimode strong coupling in cavity quantum electrodynamics.This novel regime is achieved when a single artificial atom is simultaneously strongly coupled to a large, but discrete, number of nondegenerate photonic modes of a cavity with coupling strengths comparable to the free spectral range.Our experiment reveals complex quantum multimode dynamics and spontaneous generation of quantum coherence, as evidenced by resonance fluorescence spanning many modes and ultranarrow linewidth emission.This work opens a new avenue for future experiments in light-matter interactions and poses a challenge to current theoretical approaches to its study.
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The experiments discussed in this thesis focus on the interaction of a single trapped atom with the single mode of a high-finesse optical cavity, in the regime of strong coupling. Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction, after which Chapter 2 describes our recent measurements of the transmission spectrum of the atom-cavity system. The spectrum exhibits a clearly resolved vacuum-Rabi splitting, in good quantitative agreement with theoretical predictions. A new Raman scheme for cooling atomic motion along the cavity axis enables a complete spectrum to be recorded for an individual atom trapped within the cavity mode, in contrast to all previous measurements of this type that have required averaging over 10^3-10^5 atoms. Chapter 3 discusses our observations of photon blockade for the transmitted light in the presence of one trapped atom. Excitation of the atom-cavity system by a first photon blocks the transmission of a second one, thereby converting an incident Poissonian stream of photons into a sub-Poissonian, anti-bunched stream, as confirmed by measurements of the photon statistics of the transmitted field. The intensity correlations of the cavity transmission also reveal the energy distribution for oscillatory motion of the trapped atom. Chapter 4 details a set of simple but necessary measurements of relevant experimental parameters such as cavity geometry, linewidth, mirror properties, birefringence, and detection efficiency. The thesis concludes with Appendix A, describing the efficient laser setup we use for our magneto-optical traps.