Interfacing a single trapped atom to a pair of indistinguishable photons
by
Natalia Bruno(ICFO, The Institute of Photonic Sciences)
→
US/Pacific
469 (Lauritsen)
469
Lauritsen
Description
Pizza seminar
We describe a system to interact tunable, atom-resonant single photons from cavity enhanced spontaneous parametric down conversion with individual atoms trapped at the focus of four high numerical aperture lenses. The setup is novel and versatile, as it allows us to trap one or more atoms in the same potential or in an array of traps by means of a standing wave, and, interestingly, it allows us to probe the system and collect scattered light with a large solid angle, and from two orthogonal directions with respect to the trapping beam. Promising applications of the study of isolated quantum systems can be found in quantum information science, e.g. for investigating quantum interference between atoms, or quantum simulation with arrays of Rydberg atoms. By combining resonant photon pairs with single atoms, we aim at studying fundamental light-matter processes that to date have never been directly studied, such as the stimulated emission from a single photon, single and two-photon interference using a single atom as a beam splitter.
