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Frontiers in Optics

Strong Interactions of Single Atoms and Photons with Toroidal Micro-Resonators

Harry J. Kimble

Published Jan 1, 2009• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Strong radiative coupling between one atom and photon has been achieved with high-Q micro-toroidal resonators, thereby providing capabilities for diverse advances in quantum information science, including an efficient router for single photons and atom-atom interactions catalyzed by one photon. Article not available.
DOI
10.1364/fio.2009.jwd1

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An atom strongly coupled to a high-finesse resonator forms a microscopic optical system in which the interaction of single atoms with single photons has significant consequences. This is in contrast to a typical optical system in which a field composed of many photons interacts with a medium consisting of many atoms. This unique optical system has been used in studies of the fundamental matter-radiation interaction on the single quantum level, in quantum computation, and in real-time, high-position-resolution detection of single atoms.
Beyond traditional nonlinear optics with large numbers of atoms and photons, qualitatively new phenomena arise in a quantum regime of strong interactions between single atoms and photons. By using a microscopic optical resonator, we achieved such interactions and demonstrated a robust, efficient mechanism for the regulated transport of photons one by one. With critical coupling of the input light, a single atom within the resonator dynamically controls the cavity output conditioned on the photon number at the input, thereby functioning as a photon turnstile. We verified the transformation from a Poissonian to a sub-Poissonian photon stream by photon counting measurements of the input and output fields. The results have applications in quantum information science, including for controlled interactions of single light quanta and for scalable quantum processing on atom chips.
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