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Atom--photon Entanglement with a Single Trapped Cesium Atom

Quantum Physics 2026-05-29 v1

Abstract

We demonstrate atom--photon entanglement using a single cesium atom trapped in an optical tweezer. Entanglement is generated by resonant excitation and subsequent spontaneous decay, which entangles the atomic Zeeman state with photon polarization. The photon is collected with a high numerical aperture objective (NA = 0.55) and coupled into a single-mode fiber, enabling atom photon measurements and measurement of the Bell-state fidelity. We obtain raw entanglement fidelity of F=0.942(16){\mathcal F} = 0.942(16) and inferred fidelity of Finf=0.962(26){\mathcal F}_{\rm inf} = 0.962(26) after correcting independently characterized atom measurement errors. Compared with related free-space experiments using 87^{87}Rb, the multilevel structure of the relevant excited state in 133^{133}Cs requires the use of a single short excitation pulse in each entanglement attempt in order to suppress unwanted re-excitation. These results establish a free-space Cs atom--photon interface and provide a step toward dual-species Rb--Cs quantum networking.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.28968,
  title  = {Atom--photon Entanglement with a Single Trapped Cesium Atom},
  author = {H. Hwang and J. Moon and F. Herzallah and E. Oh and A. Safari and M. Saffman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.28968},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

3 figures and 2 supplemental figures

R2 v1 2026-07-22T07:38:03.001Z