Strong interactions between integrated microresonators and alkali atomic vapors: towards single-atom, single-photon operation

Published

September 24, 2024

Author(s)

Roy Zekzer, Xiyuan Lu, Khoi Hoang, Rahul Shrestha, Sharoon Austin, Feng Zhou, Ashish Chanana, Glenn Holland, Daron Westly, Paul Lett, Alexey Gorshkov, Kartik Srinivasan

Abstract

Cavity quantum electrodynamics (cQED), the interaction of a two-level system with a high quality factor (Q) cavity, is a foundational building block in different architectures for quantum computation, communication, and metrology. The strong interaction between the atom and the cavity enables single photon operation which is required for quantum gates and sources. Cold atoms, quantum dots, and color centers in crystals are amongst the systems that have shown single photon operations, but they require significant physical infrastructure. Atomic vapors, on the other hand, require limited experimental infrastructure and are hence much easier to deploy outside a laboratory, but they consist of an ensemble of moving atoms that results in short interaction times involving multiple atoms, which can hamper quantum operations. A solution to this issue can be found in nanophotonic cavities, where the optical mode is confined to a small volume and light-matter interaction is enhanced, so that fast single-atom, single-photon operations are enabled. In this work, we study the interaction of an atomically-clad microring resonator (ACMRR) with different-sized ensembles of Rb atoms. We demonstrate strong coupling between an ensemble of approximately 50 atoms interacting with a high-quality factor (Q=4.3x10^5) ACMRR, yielding a many-atom cooperativity C = (5.5 +/- 0.3). We continue to observe signatures of atom-photon interaction for a few (<3) atoms, for which we observe saturation at the level of \reva few intracavity photons}. Further development of our platform, which includes integrated thermo-optic heaters to enable cavity tuning and stabilization, should enable the observation of interactions between single photons and single atoms.

Citation

Optica

Pub Type

Journals

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Citation

Zekzer, R. , Lu, X. , Hoang, K. , Shrestha, R. , Austin, S. , Zhou, F. , Chanana, A. , Holland, G. , Westly, D. , Lett, P. , Gorshkov, A. and Srinivasan, K. (2024), Strong interactions between integrated microresonators and alkali atomic vapors: towards single-atom, single-photon operation, Optica, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=957645 (Accessed December 3, 2024)