2020/10/14 by Elisa Will, E. Will, Luke Masters +3 · 73 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Atom (system on chip) #Atom laser #Atomic physics #Coupling (piping) #Excitation #Laser #Materials science #Mechanical and Optical Resonators #Optics #Physics #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum mechanics #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #Resonator #Trapping #Whispering gallery #Whispering-gallery wave #physics.atom-ph #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.126.233602
published in Physical Review Letters 126(23), 233602 (American Physical Society) · 13 pages, 9 figures
arxiv created 2020/10/14 · openalex publication_date 2021/06/11 · arxiv updated 2021/06/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We demonstrate trapping of a single 85Rb atom at a distance of about 200 nm from the surface of a whispering-gallery-mode bottle microresonator. The atom is trapped in an optical potential, which is created by retroreflecting a red-detuned focused laser beam from the resonator surface. We counteract the trap-induced light shift of the atomic transition frequency by superposing a second laser beam. This allows us to observe a vacuum Rabi splitting in the excitation spectrum of the coupled atom-resonator system. This first demonstration of stable and controlled interaction of a single atom with a whispering-gallery mode in the strong coupling regime opens up the route toward the implementation of quantum protocols and applications that harvest the chiral atom-light coupling present in this class of resonators.