Strong interaction between light and a single trapped atom without a cavity

Tey Meng Khoon, Zilong Chen, Syed Abdullah Aljunid, Brenda Chng, Gleb Maslennikov, Christian Kurtsiefer

Published May 4, 2008• 0 citations

Abstract

We measured the extinction of a focused light beam by a single 87Rb atom localized in an optical dipole trap and found a value of 7.2% for a focused Gaussian beam resonantly interacting with an atomic two-level system. Various models describing interaction of an atom with a focused light field are compared to explain our experimental result. Our experiment suggests that a strong coupling may be achieved without cavity assistance. This opens new perspectives for a development of an efficient atom-photon interface for Quantum Information processing.

DOI: 10.1109/qels.2008.4553171

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