Hamburg 2009 – scientific programme

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Downloads | Help

A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 10: Ultracold atoms II: Single atoms (with Q)

A 10.3: Group Report

Tuesday, March 3, 2009, 14:30–15:00, Audi-B

Quantum jumps and continuous spin measurement in a strongly coupled atom-cavity system — •Tobias Kampschulte, Wolfgang Alt, Mkrtych Khudaverdyan, Sebastian Reick, Alexander Thobe, Artur Widera, and Dieter Meschede — Institut für Angewandte Physik der Universität Bonn, Wegelerstr. 8, D-53115 Bonn

In our experiment we transport a predetermined small number of cold caesium atoms into a high-finesse optical resonator using an optical dipole trap. By monitoring the transmission of a probe laser beam resonant with the cavity we are able to measure the atomic spin continuously and observe quantum jumps between the two hyperfine ground states.

Utilizing this non-destructive method, we measure the single atom vacuum Rabi splitting via detection of the atomic state. Moreover, we experimentally demonstrate conditional dynamics of the internal states of two atoms, simultaneously coupled to the cavity field.

A reduction of the intra-cavity scattering rate would enable a quantum nondemolition measurement of the atom number as is required for probabilistic multi-atom entanglement schemes.