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A Single Ion Headlight

Robert Maiwald, Andrea Golla, Martin Fischer, Bénoît Chalopin, Marianne Bader, Simon Heugel, Vladimir Elman, Alessandro S. Villar, Markus Sondermann, Gerd Leuchs

Published Jan 1, 2011• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report on progress towards achieving a full 4pi solid angle strong coupling between a single trapped ion and a light field using a deep parabolic mirror enabling both efficient photon collection and ion excitation.
DOI
10.1364/iqec.2011.i1155

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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC)•May 1, 2011•0 citations
Our research aims at the free-space interaction of a single ion with a surrounding light field. A particularly important ingredient is the illumination of the ion from almost the full solid angle. Conventional ion traps are not built with wide open optical access as their primary design goal and are thus restricting the solid angle accessible to incoming light. By combining a reflective optical element such as a parabolic mirror with a specially designed wide open ion trap we aim to overcome this limitation.
We demonstrate the trapping of a single ion in the focus of a deep parabolic mirror that covers 81% of the solid angle surrounding the ion. Accounting for the reflectivity of the mirror we infer a photon collection efficiency of 54.8% for our setup. The underlying experimentally detected maximum fluorescence rate is $1.91\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{6}$ s${}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ from a single 174{}^{174}174Yb+{}^{+}+ ion, mainly limited by the quantum efficiency of our photon detector. Besides the high collection efficiency, the integration of an ion trap into a parabolic mirror is a key ingredient for efficient coupling of light to a single ion in free space.
Today the interaction of light and matter on the single quantum level is a wide research field. Strong coupling between a single photon and a single atom has already been achieved with optical cavities. Here, we treat strong interaction in free space, i.e. strong interaction whilst maintaining the free space density of states of the electromagnetic field. We pursue the coupling of a properly designed single photon wave packet to a single ion aiming at an excitation probability close to unity. For this purpose a linear dipole transition of an ion localized in the focal point of a deep parabolic mirror is addressed by a collimated laser beam focused onto the ion from nearly the full solid angle. In order to reach the highest possible coupling strength, the incident vectorial light field must be matched to the radiation pattern of the corresponding atomic transition both in the spatial and in the temporal domain. Here the generation of such an incident light mode is presented.