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Collective state measurement of mesoscopic ensembles with single-atom resolution

Atomic Physics 2015-06-04 v2 Quantum Physics

Abstract

For mesoscopic ensembles containing 100 or more atoms we measure the total atom number and the number of atoms in a specific hyperfine state with single-atom resolution. The measurement detects the atom-induced shift of the resonance frequency of an optical cavity containing the ensemble. This work extends the range of cavity-based detection with single-atom resolution by more than an order of magnitude in atom number, and provides the readout capability necessary for Heisenberg-limited interferometry with atomic ensembles.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1203.3160,
  title  = {Collective state measurement of mesoscopic ensembles with single-atom resolution},
  author = {Hao Zhang and Robert McConnell and Senka Ćuk and Qian Lin and Monika H. Schleier-Smith and Ian D. Leroux and Vladan Vuletić},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1203.3160},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

5 pages, 4 pdf figures