Interaction of light with a single atom in the strong focusing regime
Abstract
We consider the near-resonant interaction between a single atom and a focused light mode, where a single atom localized at the focus of a lens can scatter a significant fraction of light. Complementary to previous experiments on extinction and phase shift effects of a single atom, we report here on the measurement of coherently backscattered light. The strength of the observed effect suggests combining strong focusing with the well-established methods of cavity QED. We consider theoretically a nearly concentric cavity, which should allow for a strongly focused optical mode. Simple estimates show that in a such case one can expect a significant single photon Rabi frequency. This opens new perspectives and a possibility to scale up the system consisting of many atom+cavity nodes for quantum networking due to a significant technical simplification of the atom--light interfaces.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1006.2191,
title = {Interaction of light with a single atom in the strong focusing regime},
author = {Syed Abdullah Aljunid and Brenda Chng and Martin Paesold and Gleb Maslennikov and Christian Kurtsiefer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1006.2191},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
7 pages, 6 figures, followup of workshop "Single photon technologies" in Boulder, CO, 2009