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arXiv:quant-ph/0211013 · Physical Review Letters

State-Insensitive Cooling and Trapping of Single Atoms in an Optical Cavity

J. McKeever, J. R. Buck, A. David. Boozer, A. Kuzmich, Hanns‐Christoph Nägerl, Dan Stamper-Kurn, Harry J. Kimble

Published Apr 3, 2003• 338 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Single cesium atoms are cooled and trapped inside a small optical cavity by way of a novel far-off-resonance dipole-force trap, with observed lifetimes of $2--3\text{ }\mathrm{s}$. Trapped atoms are observed continuously via transmission of a strongly coupled probe beam, with individual events lasting $\ensuremath{\simeq}1\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{s}$. The loss of successive atoms from the trap $N\ensuremath{\ge}3\ensuremath{\rightarrow}2\ensuremath{\rightarrow}1\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$ is thereby monitored in real time. Trapping, cooling, and interactions with strong coupling are enabled by the trap potential, for which the center-of-mass motion is only weakly dependent on the atom's internal state.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.90.133602

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Acta Physica Sinica•Jan 1, 2023•0 citations
Single cesium atoms are cooled and trapped inside a small optical cavity by way of a novel far-off-resonance dipole-force trap, with observed lifetimes of 2−−3 s2--3\text{ }\mathrm{s}2−−3 s. Trapped atoms are observed continuously via transmission of a strongly coupled probe beam, with individual events lasting \ensuremath≃1  s\ensuremath{\simeq}1\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{s}\ensuremath≃1  s. The loss of successive atoms from the trap N\ensuremath≥3\ensuremath→2\ensuremath→1\ensuremath→0N\ensuremath{\ge}3\ensuremath{\rightarrow}2\ensuremath{\rightarrow}1\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0N\ensuremath≥3\ensuremath→2\ensuremath→1\ensuremath→0 is thereby monitored in real time. Trapping, cooling, and interactions with strong coupling are enabled by the trap potential, for which the center-of-mass motion is only weakly dependent on the atom's internal state.
We present trapping and cooling of single cesium atoms inside a microcavity by means of an intracavity far-off-resonance trap (FORT). By the 'magic' wavelength FORT, we achieve state-insensitive single-atom trapping and cooling in a microcavity. The cavity transmission of the probe beam strongly coupled to single atoms enables us to continuously observe the intracavity atom trapping. The average atomic localization time inside the bright FORT is about 7 ms by introducing cavity cooling with appropriate detuning. This experiment presents great potential in coherent state manipulation for strongly coupled atom–photon systems in the context of cavity quantum electrodynamics.
By integrating the techniques of laser cooling and trapping with those of cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED), single cesium atoms have been trapped within the mode of a small, high finesse optical cavity in a regime of strong coupling. The observed lifetime for individual atoms trapped within the cavity mode is $\ensuremath{\tau}\ensuremath{\approx}28\mathrm{ms}$, and is limited by fluctuations of light forces arising from the far-detuned intracavity field. This initial realization of trapped atoms in cavity QED should enable diverse protocols in quantum information science.
Two recent experiments are discussed which demonstrate real-time trapping and monitoring of single atoms within a high-finesse optical resonator. A single atom moving within the resonator generates large variations in the transmission of a weak probe laser, which are recorded in real time. These cavity QED signals are used to trigger ON a confining potential to trap the atom. In the first experiment, the confining potential is provided by the single-photon forces associated with the cavity QED interaction. An inversion algorithm allows individual atom trajectories to be reconstructed from the record of cavity transmission, and reveals single atoms bound in orbit by the mechanical forces associated with single photons. In a second experiment, an additional classical standing-wave dipole trap provides the trapping, enabling a 28 ms trap lifetime for single strongly coupled atoms.
The motion of individual cesium atoms trapped inside an optical resonator is revealed with the atom-cavity microscope (ACM). A single atom moving within the resonator generates large variations in the transmission of a weak probe laser, which are recorded in real time. An inversion algorithm then allows individual atom trajectories to be reconstructed from the record of cavity transmission and reveals single atoms bound in orbit by the mechanical forces associated with single photons. In these initial experiments, the ACM yields 2-micrometer spatial resolution in a 10-microsecond time interval. Over the duration of the observation, the sensitivity is near the standard quantum limit for sensing the motion of a cesium atom.
Cooling is indispensable for trapping and observing single free atoms.In atomic physics, this can be achieved efficiently by laser cooling.Conventional methods to laser cool atoms are based on repeated optical pumping cycles followed by spontaneous emission of a photon from the atom.Such pumping schemes can only be applied to certain atomic species, which have a closed optical transition.Drawbacks caused by photons spontaneously emitted from the atom can be avoided in the strongly coupled atom-cavity system in which energy and entropy can be removed by photons lost from the cavity.This thesis reports on the first observation of this cooling mechanism which does not rely on spontaneous emission.In the experiment, a single atom is captured in an intracavity dipole trap.Illuminating the system with a weak, slightly blue-detuned light beam extends the storage time of the atom in the trap.The observed cooling force is at least five times larger than the force achieved by free-space cooling methods at comparable excitation of a two-level atom.Utilising cavity cooling, single atoms are prepared strongly-coupled to the mode of a high-finesse cavity.This allows to observe two well-resolved normal-mode peaks in both the cavity transmission as well as in the trap lifetime.The experiment is in agreement with a Monte Carlo simulation, demonstrating the localisation of the atom to within a tenth of a wavelength.The ability to individually excite the normal modes opens new possibilities to use this system for applications in quantum information science, including the realisation of quantum-logic gates.In the future cavity cooling might be applied to systems which cannot be cooled by conventional methods as for instance molecules or an atom carrying a quantum bit.
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.