Frankfurt 2006 – scientific programme
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Q: Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 53: Fallen und Kühlung II
Q 53.8: Talk
Wednesday, March 15, 2006, 16:45–17:00, HII
Atom detection with a chip-based fiber Fabry-Pérot cavity — •Yves Colombe1, Tilo Steinmetz1,2, David Hunger1, Philipp Treutlein1, Theodor W. Hänsch1, and Jakob Reichel2 — 1Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik und Sektion Physik der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany — 2Laboratoire Kastler Brossel de l’ENS, Paris, France
Single-atom detection capability is a requirement in many quantum information processing schemes. In this talk we report on our progress towards single-atom detection on a microchip. We have developped a miniaturized optical Fabry-Pérot resonator that is integrated on an atom chip, only 200µm away from the surface. The cavity is formed by concave mirrors glued at the ends of two optical fibers facing each other. It has a length of 27µm and a finesse of about 1000. We magnetically trap and transport rubidium atoms on the chip over an 8mm distance, from the MOT loading region to a magnetic trap nearby the cavity. The atomic cloud is then evaporatively cooled to temperatures in the microkelvin range, and tranferred to the resonator’s mode in a controlled way. The magnetically trapped atoms are detected by monitoring the transmission of the cavity. We have been able to detect clouds of about 10 atoms. With bigger atomic ensembles, we have also observed dispersive signals due to the refractive index of the atoms, as well as absorptive optical bistability.