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Bifurcations in Single Atom Cavity QED

Michael A. Armen

Published May 28, 2009• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Current research in single-atom cavity quantum electrodynamics largely emphasizes the input-output properties of strongly coupled systems, from normal mode splitting to photon blockade. But over the last decade, experiments have, with few exceptions, focused on relatively weak driving conditions. This thesis concentrates on a range of quantum nonlinear phenomena in the strong driving regime. In particular, I discuss the observation of random-telegraph phase switching in the light transmitted through a Fabry-Perot resonator containing one strongly coupled atom and 10-100 photons, confirming long-standing predictions of a phenomenon known as single-atom phase bistability. These results highlight the relevance of cavity quantum electrodynamics in the development of attojoule nanophotonic logic and signal processing. In addition, I consider a general class of bifurcation phenomena that are manifest within this physical setting. Here, focus is placed on the investigation of quantum-classical correspondence near semiclassical bifurcation points.

DOI
10.7907/2g57-2609

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Current research in single-atom cavity quantum electrodynamics largely emphasizes the input-output properties of strongly coupled systems, from normal mode splitting to photon blockade. But over the last decade, experiments have, with few exceptions, focused on relatively weak driving conditions. This thesis concentrates on a range of quantum nonlinear phenomena in the strong driving regime. In particular, I discuss the observation of random-telegraph phase switching in the light transmitted through a Fabry-Perot resonator containing one strongly coupled atom and 10-100 photons, confirming long-standing predictions of a phenomenon known as single-atom phase bistability. These results highlight the relevance of cavity quantum electrodynamics in the development of attojoule nanophotonic logic and signal processing. In addition, I consider a general class of bifurcation phenomena that are manifest within this physical setting. Here, focus is placed on the investigation of quantum-classical correspondence near semiclassical bifurcation points.
Broadband homodyne detection of the light transmitted by a Fabry-Perot cavity containing a strongly-coupled (133)Cs atom is used to probe the dynamic optical response in a regime where semiclassical theory predicts bistability but strong quantum corrections should apply. While quantum fluctuations destabilize true equilibrium bistability, our observations confirm the existence of metastable states with finite lifetimes and a hysteretic response is apparent when the optical drive is modulated on comparable timescales. Our experiment elucidates remnant semiclassical behavior in the attojoule (~10 photon) regime of single-atom cavity QED, of potential significance for ultra-low power photonic signal processing.
In the strong coupling regime of cavity QED where the characteristic damping rates are orders of magnitude below the coherent coupling, resolved multi-photon resonances can be observed for strong enough driving strength. In a certain frequency range, the external coherent drive field hits multi-photon resonances which correspond to very high order transitions that cannot be excited at the given power of the driving field. We found that in this range the cavity field evolves into a robust semiclassical solution which is the mixture of the vacuum and an excited quasi-classical state. The system is reminiscent of optical bistability, however, here a single atom produces a telegraph signal for the outgoing intensity by switching between two states with large photon number difference. We calculate this behavior also for the Tavis-Cummings model representing three qubits in an existing circuit QED experimental setting.
Cavity quantum electrodynamics (cavity QED) describes electromagnetic fields in a confined space and the radiative properties of atoms in such fields. The simplest example of such system is a single atom interacting with one mode of a high-finesse resonator. Besides observation and exploration of fundamental quantum mechanical effects, this system bears a high potential for applications quantum information science such as, e.g., quantum logic gates, quantum communication and quantum teleportation. In this thesis I present an experiment on the deterministic coupling of a single neutral atom to the mode of a high-finesse optical resonator. In Chapter 1 I describe our basic techniques for trapping and observing single cesium atoms. As a source of single atoms we use a high-gradient magneto-optical trap, which captures the atoms from background gas in a vacuum chamber and cools them down to millikelvin temperatures. The atoms are then transferred without loss into a standing-wave dipole trap, which provides a conservative potential required for experiments on atomic coherence such as quantum information processing and metrology on trapped atoms. Moreover, shifting the standing-wave pattern allows us to deterministically transport the atoms (Chapter 2). In combination with non-destructive fluorescence imaging of individual trapped atoms, this enables us to control their position with submicrometer precision over several millimeters along the dipole trap. The cavity QED system can distinctly display quantum behaviour in the so-called strong coupling regime, i.e., when the coherent atom-cavity coupling rate dominates dissipation in the system. This sets the main requirements on the resonator's properties: small mode volume and high finesse. Chapter 3 is devoted to the manufacturing, assembling, and testing of an ultra-high finesse optical Fabry-Perot resonator, stabilized to the atomic transition. In Chapter 4 I present the transportation of single atoms into the cavity and their coupling to the cavity mode. The strong coupling manifests itself in a strong reduction of the cavity transmission probed by a weak external laser. The atoms remain trapped and coupled to the cavity mode for several seconds until we move them out of the cavity for final analysis of their number and position.
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.
The interplay of quantum fluctuations with nonlinear dynamics is a central topic in the study of open quantum systems, connected to fundamental issues (such as decoherence and the quantum-classical transition) and practical applications (such as coherent information processing and the development of mesoscopic sensors and amplifiers). With this context in mind, we here present a computational study of some elementary bifurcations that occur in a driven and damped cavity quantum electrodynamics (cavity QED) model at low intracavity photon number. In particular, we utilize the single-atom cavity QED master equation and associated stochastic Schr\"odinger equations to characterize the equilibrium distribution and dynamical behavior of the quantized intracavity optical field in parameter regimes near points in the semiclassical (mean-field, Maxwell-Bloch) bifurcation set. Our numerical results show that the semiclassical limit sets are qualitatively preserved in the quantum stationary states, although quantum fluctuations apparently induce phase diffusion within periodic orbits and stochastic transitions between attractors. We restrict our attention to an experimentally realistic parameter regime.
Although diverse manifestations of the quantum or non–classical character of the electromagnetic field have arisen over the past two decades in quantum optics, almost without exception these observations have been made in a domain of weak coupling for which dissipation is dominant over the coherent dynamical processes associated with single quanta. By contrast, research in the area of cavity quantum electrodynamics has achieved the exceptional circumstance of strong coupling for the interaction of individual atoms with the quantized field of a high–quality resonator. The research programs in the Quantum Optics Group at Caltech attempt to explore quantum dynamical processes in this domain of strong coupling, and include investigations of photon antibunching due to quantum–state reduction, of the implementation of quantum logic with single photons, of new avenues for quantum–state synthesis and of atomic centre–of–mass motion for single atoms falling one–by–one through the field of a high–finesse optical cavity.