Hannover 2003 – scientific programme

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Q: Quantenoptik

Q 19: Fallen und Kühlung 2

Q 19.3: Talk

Tuesday, March 25, 2003, 14:30–14:45, F303

Coherent manipulation of single atoms in a dipole trap — •Igor Dotsenko, Stefan Kuhr, Wolfgang Alt, Dominik Schrader, Yevhen Miroshnychenko, Wenjamin Rosenfeld, Mkrtych Khudaverdyan, Victor Gomer, Arno Rauschenbeutel, and Dieter Meschede — Institut für Angewandte Physik, Wegelerstr. 8, 53115 Bonn

The controlled manipulation of neutral atoms and their use in quantum computing require long coherence times. Here we report on coherent manipulation of single trapped Cs atoms and study of decoherence mechanisms.

Driving microwave transitions between hyperfine levels performs coherent manipulation of the trapped cesium atoms. This enables us to create well-defined hyperfine state superpositions and to measure the coherence times by means of Ramsey and spin echo techniques. The decay of Ramsey fringes corresponds to inhomogeneous dephasing while the decay of spin echo contrast shows irreversible or homogeneous dephasing. The corresponding irreversible dephasing time is on the order of 100 ms.

Our standing-wave dipole trap will soon serve to deterministically move the atoms into a high-finesse cavity. To study how transport affects the coherence properties we have performed spin echo measurements, in which we transported the atoms between the microwave pulses. These measurements prove the preservation of atomic coherence during transport.