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Acta Physica Sinica

Precision measurement of single-atom trajectories in higher-order Laguerre-Gaussian transverse modes of a Fabry-Perot cavity

Wang Yan-Na, Di Zhao, Fang Ai-ping, Chen-Wei Jiang, Shaoyan Gao, Li Fu-Li

Published Jan 1, 2015• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A coupled quantum system composed of cavity field and atoms is one of the main research contents of cavity quantum electrodynamics. It can be used to realize single atom manipulation and measurement, and has important significance for studying the interaction between light and the atom, preparing quantum states and quantum entanglement. Current research work mainly focuses on two aspects. One is to achieve the atom trapping via the feedback control of the trapping laser intensity. The other is to measure the single atomic motion in a Fabry-Perot cavity by using Hermite-Gaussian transverse modes. The detection of the atomic trajectories has been realized via the observation of transmission spectra of the strong coupling system composed of cold atoms and Hermite-Gaussian transverse modes in a Fabry-Perot cavity. In order to observe the atomic motion trajectories in the cavity, we theoretically study the transmission spectrum of a strong coupling system composed of cold atoms and Laguerre-Gaussian transverse modes in a Fabry-Perot cavity in this paper. We calculate the relationship between the coupling coefficient and the mode number of Laguerre-Gaussian transverse modes. The result shows that with the increase of Laguerre-Gaussian transverse mode number, the maximum coupling coefficient between the atoms and cavity fields is almost unchanged, so the contrast of the detected spectrum is nearly independent of the mode number. Analysis shows that Laguerre-Gaussian transverse mode provides more abundant information about atomic motion trajectory than Hermite-Gaussian transverse mode. The field distribution of Laguerre-Gaussian transverse mode is ring-shaped. Owing to the ring shape, the atoms dropped at different positions experience different electric field intensities, and the detected transmission spectra are changed. Therefore, we can implement the high precision distinguishment of the atomic trajectories by observing the features of the transmission spectra such as the number of the transmission peaks and their positions. Furthermore, a small deviation of the atomic motion trajectories, on the edges of the rings of the electric field, may induce great change in transmission spectrum, and then we can very accurately detect the atomic motion around these positions.

DOI
10.7498/aps.64.224214

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A coupled quantum system composed of cavity field and atoms is one of the main research contents of cavity quantum electrodynamics. It can be used to realize single atom manipulation and measurement, and has important significance for studying the interaction between light and the atom, preparing quantum states and quantum entanglement. Current research work mainly focuses on two aspects. One is to achieve the atom trapping via the feedback control of the trapping laser intensity. The other is to measure the single atomic motion in a Fabry-Perot cavity by using Hermite-Gaussian transverse modes. The detection of the atomic trajectories has been realized via the observation of transmission spectra of the strong coupling system composed of cold atoms and Hermite-Gaussian transverse modes in a Fabry-Perot cavity. In order to observe the atomic motion trajectories in the cavity, we theoretically study the transmission spectrum of a strong coupling system composed of cold atoms and Laguerre-Gaussian transverse modes in a Fabry-Perot cavity in this paper. We calculate the relationship between the coupling coefficient and the mode number of Laguerre-Gaussian transverse modes. The result shows that with the increase of Laguerre-Gaussian transverse mode number, the maximum coupling coefficient between the atoms and cavity fields is almost unchanged, so the contrast of the detected spectrum is nearly independent of the mode number. Analysis shows that Laguerre-Gaussian transverse mode provides more abundant information about atomic motion trajectory than Hermite-Gaussian transverse mode. The field distribution of Laguerre-Gaussian transverse mode is ring-shaped. Owing to the ring shape, the atoms dropped at different positions experience different electric field intensities, and the detected transmission spectra are changed. Therefore, we can implement the high precision distinguishment of the atomic trajectories by observing the features of the transmission spectra such as the number of the transmission peaks and their positions. Furthermore, a small deviation of the atomic motion trajectories, on the edges of the rings of the electric field, may induce great change in transmission spectrum, and then we can very accurately detect the atomic motion around these positions.
We have experimentally demonstrated the strong coupling between single atoms and the higher-order Hermite-Gaussian transverse modes in a high-finesse optical microcavity. Compared to the usual low-order symmetric transverse modes, multiple lobes and the asymmetric spatial pattern of the titled modes provide more information about the motion of single atoms in the cavity. The motional information can be extracted from the measured transmission spectra, which includes the velocities and the positions of the atoms in vertical and off-axis directions. The scheme has great potential in time-resolved atom-cavity microscopy and in tracking the three-dimensional single atom trajectory in real time.
We present an alternative route to track the motion of a single atom traversing a high-finesse optical cavity by means of the coherence statistics of photon antibunching. Here the single atom strongly couples to the high-order transverse Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) mode (e.g., LG01{\text{LG}}_{01}LG01​) of optical cavity, instead of the high-order transverse Hermite-Gaussian (HG) mode, which is beneficial to the single-atom trajectory measurement utilizing such a photon antibunching effect. With this aim, we characterize the position-dependent quantum correlations of the transmitted light in such a cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) system subject to various kinds of the LG modes, finding that the photon antibunching effect is closely related to the position of the atom in the transverse plane and therefore the degree of the antibunching carries the information about the position of the atom within the cavity. The numerical results of the second-order correlation function agree well with the analytical calculations. Thanks to the tilted transverse LG01{\text{LG}}_{01}LG01​ mode of the cavity, which is inclined to the vertical direction by an angle of $\ensuremath{\sim}{15}^{\ensuremath{\circ}}$, the LG-mode cavity QED architecture helps us to eliminate the degenerate trajectory of the single atom falling through the cavity and to obtain a unique atomic trajectory. In a $10\text{\ensuremath{-}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{s}$-long time interval as an example, our in-depth analysis displays that the atomic position with the spatial resolution of $\ensuremath{\sim}4.0\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{m}$ in the vertical direction (axis xxx) can be achieved. The present study is useful for well understanding and researching both the robust generation of single-photon source and the precision measurement of single-atom trajectory.
Cavity quantum electrodynamic system with strongly coupled single atoms provides a good platform for studying quantum information processing, quantum simulation, quantum network, and distributed quantum computing. Cooling and trapping single atoms is a crucial technique in the quantum technology. At present, in a high-finesse cavity with finite space, cooling and trapping single atoms is a big challenge, even though it is a mature technique for free space. Great efforts have been made to cool and trap single atoms inside a cavity, and for a trapped atom its lifetime has reached as long as tens of seconds. Developing a more flexible method of cooling and trapping single atoms in a cavity is still essential for a strongly coupled cavity quantum electrodynamic system. In this work, we demonstrate experimentally that a single cesium atom in a cavity can be trapped by utilizing a single optical tweezer settled in cavity mode, and its lifetime is (2.60 ± 0.18) s. The experiment is carried out in a Fabry-Perot cavity, which is assembled by two concave mirrors each with a curvature radius of 100 mm, and cavity length of 335 μm. The concave surfaces are highly reflective, and the cavity has a finesse of 6.1 × 104. The 1080 nm optical tweezer with a waist of 2 μm is formed by an achromatic lens group with a numerical aperture of 0.4. At first, the precooled atomic assemble released from the magneto-optical trap (MOT) is transferred into cavity mode by an optical dipole trap with a waist of 36 μm. Then, one of the successfully transferred atoms is captured by the optical tweezer with the aid of cavity cooling mechanism. A blue detuned cavity locking laser is used as a standing-wave optical trap along the cavity axis. The signal of successfully trapped one atom is obtained by recording transmission of the cavity that will decrease owing to the strong coupling induced vacuum Rabi splitting. Finally, we demonstrate the precise manipulation of the atom-cavity coupling strength, which is achieved by scanning the position of the trapped atom step by step by using a high-precision translation stage. The system realized in this work can be used to study the dynamics of single atom-photon interactions with adjustable coupling strength. In addition, the mechanism adopted in this work is compatible with constructing tweezer arrays inside cavity mode, and thus possesses more flexibility and great potentials in cavity-based quantum entanglement and quantum simulation.
The collective strong coupling of rubidium atoms in a magneto-optical trap (MOT) to the Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) modes of a Fabry-P\'erot cavity is investigated. Bright and dark 85Rb^{85}\mathrm{Rb}85Rb MOT atoms are prepared at the geometric center of the cavity, and the vacuum Rabi splitting (VRS) of the collectively coupled atom-cavity system is measured for LGl0{\mathrm{LG}}_{l0}LGl0​ (l=0,1,2,3l=0,1,2,3l=0,1,2,3) modes. The atom number coupled to the cavity mode depends on the overlap of the atomic density distribution and the specific spatial mode function, which is reflected in the measured VRS spectrum. The known mode function and the measured VRS can then be used to test whether the atomic density distribution in the experiment is Gaussian or uniform. A simple theoretical model for this process is described, and the experimental measurements are found to be in close agreement with the model.
We demonstrate the trajectory measurement of the single neutral atoms deterministically using a high-finesse optical microcavity. The single atom strongly couples to the high-order transverse vacuum TEM10{}_{10}10​ mode, instead of the usual TEM00{}_{00}00​ mode, and the parameters of the system are $({g}_{10},\ensuremath{\kappa},\ensuremath{\gamma})=2\ensuremath{\pi}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}(20.5,2.6,2.6) \text{MHz}$. The atoms simply fall down freely from the magneto-optical trap into the cavity modes, and the trajectories of the single atoms are linear. The transmission spectra of atoms passing through the TEM10{}_{10}10​ mode are detected by single-photon counting modules and are well fitted. Thanks to the tilted cavity transverse TEM10{}_{10}10​ mode, which is inclined to the vertical direction  ~ ${45}^{\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{}}$, it helps us to eliminate the degenerate trajectory of the single atom falling through the cavity and to obtain a unique atom trajectory. An atom position with a high precision of $0.1 \ensuremath{\mu}\text{m}$ in the off-axis direction (axis yyy) is obtained, and a spatial resolution of $5.6 \ensuremath{\mu}\text{m}$ is achieved in a time interval of $10 \ensuremath{\mu}\text{s}$ along the vertical direction (axis xxx). The average velocity of the atoms is also measured from the atom transits, which determines independently the temperature of the atoms in a magneto-optical trap, $186\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}19 \ensuremath{\mu}\text{K}$.