Geometrically asymmetric optical cavity for strong atom-photon coupling

• Main Authors: Kawasaki, Akio (Contributor), Braverman, Boris (Contributor), Pedrozo Penafiel, Edwin Eduardo (Contributor), Shu, Chi (Contributor), Colombo, Simone (Contributor), Li, Zeyang (Contributor), Ozel, Ilkem Ozge (Contributor), Chen, Wenlan (Contributor), Salvi, Leonardo (Contributor), Heinz, Andre (Contributor), Levonian, David S. (Contributor), Akamatsu, Daisuke (Contributor), Xiao, Yanhong (Contributor), Vuletic, Vladan (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics (Contributor), MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society, 2019-02-11T19:04:22Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

Optical cavities are widely used to enhance the interaction between atoms and light. Typical designs using a geometrically symmetric structure in the near-concentric regime face a tradeoff between mechanical stability and high single-atom cooperativity. To overcome this limitation, we design and implement a geometrically asymmetric standing-wave cavity. This structure, with mirrors of very different radii of curvature, allows strong atom-light coupling while exhibiting good stability against misalignment. We observe effective cooperativities ranging from η[subscript eff] = 10 to η[subscript eff] = 0.2 by shifting the location of the atoms in the cavity mode. By loading ¹⁷¹ Yb atoms directly from a mirror magneto-optical trap into a one-dimensional optical lattice along the cavity mode, we produce atomic ensembles with collective cooperativities up to Nη = 2×10⁴. This system opens a way to preparing spin squeezing for an optical lattice clock and to accessing a range of nonclassical collective states.
United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Grant W911NF- 11-1-0202))
National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant PHY-1505862)
National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant PHY- 1806765)
National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant PHY-1734011)
United States. Office of Naval Research (Grant N00014-17-1-2254)
United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Grant FA9550-16-1-0323)