Single atom as a mirror of an optical cavity.
By tightly focusing a laser field onto a single cold ion trapped in front of a far-distant dielectric mirror, we could observe a quantum electrodynamic effect whereby the ion behaves as the optical mirror of a Fabry-Pérot cavity. We show that the amplitude of the laser field is significantly altered due to a modification of the electromagnetic mode structure around the atom in a novel regime in which the laser intensity is already changed by the atom alone. We propose a direct application of this system as a quantum memory for single photons.
Institute for Experimental Physics, University of Innsbruck, Austria.
G
G
Hétet
L
L
Slodička
M
M
Hennrich
R
R
Blatt