Physics Today

An Atom is Trapped by the Field of Just One Photon

Barbara Goss Levi

Published Jul 1, 2000• 0 citations

Abstract

Researchers have been pushing atoms around with laser beams for many years, cooling them to record low temperatures and capturing them in confined spaces. Most such efforts require many photons. The field of a single photon is not generally strong enough to corral an atom—unless, that is, the light field is enhanced by confinement within a tiny cavity and the atom enters at a crawl. Then the coupling energy of the atom to the field can exceed the atom's kinetic energy, and the atom can become ensnared. A group from Caltech and the University of Auckland, and also a group at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, recently created the required conditions by combining cavity quantum electrodynamics with laser trapping and cooling; both groups succeeded in confining single atoms within optical cavities with an average of one photon in the cavity.

DOI: 10.1063/1.1292469

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Introduction

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In recent decades plenty of optical active quantum systems have been intensely studied on the level of single emitters. Integration into hybrid systems was demonstrated for single atoms, semicon- ductor quantum dots, color centers in wide-bandgap material, and single molecules. Among these, single atoms and ions in the gas phase played a pioneering role, and they were used to establish many experimental techniques. Already in the late 1990s the groups around S. Haroche in Paris andH.Walther in Garching coupled single atoms in the gas phase to ultra-high-ﬁnesse microwave cavities. In their experiments several basic concepts of cavity quantum electrodynamics, like vacuum Rabi oscillation [56, 57], were tested, and the EPR-like entanglement of two atoms was achieved [58]. Later on, the group around G. Rempe in Munich succeeded in building hybrids of optical cavities and single rubidium atoms. Here, cavity-enhanced cooling and trapping was demonstrated [59, 60].

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Self-assembled quantum dots in a fully tunable microcavity

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The interaction of light with matter is at the heart of quantum optics, which itself enables insight into the fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics. First experimental access to this research field has been realized by coupling atoms to light. Here, the transition between discrete energy states of the atom is associated with the absorption and emission of a photon, a single quantum of the electromagnetic field. As a central aspect of quantum optics, the light-emitter interaction can be significantly enhanced by placing the emitter in optical cavity that is on resonance with the emitter. In recent years, this has led to a rapidly evolving research field known as cavity quantum electrodynamics (CQED). In CQED two different regimes are distinguished: the strong and the weak coupling regimes. In the strong coupling regime, the emitted photon is reflected from the cavity mirrors and eventually reabsorbed by the emitter. In contrast, the weak coupling regime describes the irreversible emission, where the photon leaks out of the cavity before it can be reabsorbed. Both the weak and strong coupling regimes enabled fundamental experiments for a better understanding of quantum optical phenomena. \n \n \n \nCQED grants access to the quantum world and hence offers potentially revolutionizing applications, particularly in the field of quantum information processing. A central aspect for the successful implementation of quantum applications is the system's scalability. Unfortunately, placing atoms deterministically inside a cavity remains technologically elaborate and hence minimizes the prospect of scaling a atom-CQED system. \n \nA possibility to address this issue is to implement CQED in the solid state, where sophisticated fabrication strategies allow miniaturization and scalability of the system. Particularly the development of self-assembled quantum dots (QD) in semiconductors represent a promising route. QDs can be considered as artificial atoms that mimic the atomic two-level system. These structures interact strongly with light and therefore have the potential for replacing atoms in CQED. As a central advantage, QDs are naturally trapped, which greatly simplifies the deterministic incorporation into the cavity. \n \nIn recent years, many efforts have been made to couple self-assembled QDs to microcavities. Generally, the successful implementation of CQED requires a cavity with a high quality factor Q and a low mode volume. In a majority of the approaches, the high Q/small mode volume cavities were monolithically defined around the QD, embedding the QD at a fixed position inside the cavity. Both the weak and strong coupling regimes have been reached with these systems. However, for future applications they suffer from several disadvantages. The fixed position of the QD inside the cavity minimizes the prospects for spectral tunability and spatial positioning the QD inside the cavity. Furthermore, prospects for further increasing of the cavity Q-factor and minimization of the mode volume remain limited in these systems. \n \nIn this thesis the mentioned disadvantages are addressed by developing a fully tunable miniaturized Fabry-Pérot microcavity with low mode volume. The design enables both spatial positioning of the emitter inside the cavity and spectral tunability. Successful coupling of a single QD to the microcavity is demonstrated including the strong coupling regime. Further a new approach to decrease the cavity mode volume is presented, where we demonstrate weak coupling is achieved

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