2010/04/14 by Martin Mücke, Eden Figueroa, J. Bochmann +8
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Atom (system on chip) #Atomic physics #Cavity quantum electrodynamics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Electromagnetically induced transparency #Light field #Open quantum system #Optics #Photon #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum imaging #Quantum mechanics #Quantum optics #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #Quantum technology #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/nature09093
published as Nature 465, 755-758 (2010) · 6 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2010/04/14 · openalex publication_date 2010/05/11 · arxiv updated 2010/09/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Optical nonlinearities offer unique possibilities for the control of light with light. A prominent example is electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) where the transmission of a probe beam through an optically dense medium is manipulated by means of a control beam. Scaling such experiments into the quantum domain with one, or just a few particles of both light and matter will allow for the implementation of quantum computing protocols with atoms and photons or the realisation of strongly interacting photon gases exhibiting quantum phase transitions of light. Reaching these aims is challenging and requires an enhanced matter-light interaction as provided by cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED). Here we demonstrate EIT with a single atom quasi-permanently trapped inside a high-finesse optical cavity. The atom acts as a quantum-optical transistor with the ability to coherently control the transmission of light through the cavity. We furthermore investigate the scaling of EIT when the atom number is increased one by one. The measured spectra are in excellent agreement with a theoretical model. Merging EIT with cavity QED and single quanta of matter is likely to become the cornerstone for novel applications, e.g. the dynamic control of the photon statistics of propagating light fields or the engineering of Fock-state superpositions of flying light pulses.