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arXiv:quant-ph/0311054 · Journal of Physics B Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics

Cavity-assisted nondestructive laser cooling of atomic qubits

Andreas Griessner, Dieter Jaksch, P. Zoller

Published Mar 17, 2004• 24 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We analyze two configurations for laser cooling of neutral atoms whose internal states store qubits. The atoms are trapped in an optical lattice which is placed inside a cavity. We show that the coupling of the atoms to the damped cavity mode can provide a mechanism which leads to cooling of the motion without destroying the quantum information.

DOI
10.1088/0953-4075/37/7/004

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We analyze two configurations for laser cooling of neutral atoms whose internal states store qubits. The atoms are trapped in an optical lattice which is placed inside a cavity. We show that the coupling of the atoms to the damped cavity mode can provide a mechanism which leads to cooling of the motion without destroying the quantum information.
We present a scheme to cool the motional state of neutral atoms confined in sites of an optical lattice by immersing the system in a superfluid. The motion of the atoms is damped by the generation of excitations in the superfluid, and under appropriate conditions the internal state of the atom remains unchanged. This scheme can thus be used to cool atoms used to encode a series of entangled qubits nondestructively. Within realizable parameter ranges, the rate of cooling to the ground state is found to be sufficiently large to be useful in experiments.
Abstract All conventional methods to laser-cool atoms rely on repeated cycles of optical pumping and spontaneous emission of a photon by the atom. Spontaneous emission in a random direction provides the dissipative mechanism required to remove entropy from the atom. However, alternative cooling methods have been proposed1, 2 for a single atom strongly coupled to a high-finesse cavity; the role of spontaneous emission is replaced by the escape of a photon from the cavity. Application of such cooling schemes would improve the performance of atom–cavity systems for quantum information processing3, 4. Furthermore, as cavity cooling does not rely on spontaneous emission, it can be applied to systems that cannot be laser-cooled by conventional methods; these include molecules2 (which do not have a closed transition) and collective excitations of Bose condensates5, which are destroyed by randomly directed recoil kicks. Here we demonstrate cavity cooling of single rubidium atoms stored in an intracavity dipole trap. The cooling mechanism results in extended storage times and improved localization of atoms. We estimate that the observed cooling rate is at least five times larger than that produced by free-space cooling methods, for comparable excitation of the atom.
We theoretically analyze the cooling dynamics of an atom which is tightly trapped inside a high-finesse optical resonator. Cooling is achieved by suitably tailored scattering processes, in which the atomic dipole transition either scatters a cavity photon into the electromagnetic field external to the resonator, or performs a stimulated emission into the cavity mode, which then dissipates via the cavity mirrors. We identify the parameter regimes in which the atom center-of-mass motion can be cooled into the ground state of the external trap. We predict that, in particular, for high cooperativities, interference effects mediated by the atomic transition may lead to higher efficiencies. The dynamics is compared with the cooling dynamics of a trapped atom inside a resonator studied by Zippilli and Morigi [Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 143001 (2005)] where the atom, instead of the cavity, is driven by a laser field.
We show that an ensemble of two-level atoms commonly coupled to a single, driven, damped high-QQQ cavity mode could be cooled and trapped via the correlated dynamics of cavity field and the atomic motion. For sufficiently large detuning between the atoms and the field, spontaneous emission plays no role in the dynamics, and the cooling scheme can be applied to all particles with a sufficient optical dipole moment. The time scale of this collective cooling process increases with the particle number and can be optimized by suitably tailoring the pump field amplitude and frequency. The key properties of the underlying mechanism are discussed using a linearized model, where one can derive a closed set of equations for certain ensemble averages and the field. The results are then compared with N-particle dynamical simulations of the full equations.
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-mediated cooling of the center--of--mass motion of a transversally, coherently pumped atom along the axis of a high--Q cavity is studied. The internal dynamics of the atomic dipole strongly coupled to the cavity field is treated by a non-perturbative quantum mechanical model, while the effect of the cavity on the external motion is described classically in terms of the analytically obtained linear friction and diffusion coefficients. Efficient cavity-induced damping is found which leads to steady-state temperatures well-below the Doppler limit. We reveal a mathematical symmetry between the results here and for a similar system where, instead of the atom, the cavity field is pumped. The cooling process is strongly enhanced in a degenerate multimode cavity. Both the temperature and the number of scattered photons during the characteristic cooling time exhibits a significant reduction with increasing number of modes involved in the dynamics. The residual number of spontaneous emissions in a cooling time for large mode degeneracy can reach and even drop below the limit of a single photon.