By tightly focussing a laser field onto a single cold ion trapped in front of a far-distant dielectric mirror, we could observe a quantum electrodynamic effect whereby the ion behaves as the optical mirror of a Fabry-P\'erot cavity. We show that the amplitude of the laser field is significantly altered due to a modification of the electromagnetic mode structure around the atom in a novel regime in which the laser intensity is already changed by the atom alone. e propose a direct application of this system as a quantum memory for single photons.
@article{arxiv.1105.1919,
title = {A Single Atom as a Mirror of an Optical Cavity},
author = {G. Hétet and L. Slodička and M. Hennrich and R. Blatt},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1105.1919},
year = {2013}
}
Comments
7 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Physical Review Letters