On the analogy between a single atom and an optical resonator

Abstract

A single atom in free space can have a strong influence on a light beam and a single photon can have a strong effect on a single atom in free space. Regarding this interaction, two conceptually different questions can be asked: can a single atom fully absorb a single photon and can a single atom fully reflect a light beam. The conditions for achieving the full effect in either case are different. Here we discuss related questions in the context of an optical resonator. When shaping a laser pulse properly it will be fully absorbed by an optical resonator, i.e., no light will be reflected and all the pulse energy will accumulate inside the resonator before it starts leaking out. We show in detail that in this case the temporal pulse shape has to match the time-reversed pulse obtained by the cavity's free decay. On the other hand a resonator, made of highly reflecting mirrors which normally reflect a large portion of any incident light, may fully transmit the light, as long as the light is narrow band and resonant with the cavity. The analogy is the single atom - normally letting most of the light pass - which under special conditions may fully reflect the incident light beam. Using this analogy we are able to study the effects of practical experimental limitations in the atom-photon coupling, such as finite pulses, bandwidths, and solid angle coverage, and to use the optical resonator as a test bed for the implementation of the quantum experiment.

References in corpus (12)

• Measurement of conditional phase shifts for quantum logic
• A near deterministic linear optical CNOT gate
• Efficient coupling of photons to a single molecule and the observation of its resonance fluorescence
• Strong interaction between light and a single trapped atom without a cavity
• Perfect excitation of a matter qubit by a single photon in free space
• Single photon absorption by a single quantum emitter
• Design of a mode converter for efficient light-atom coupling in free space
• Strong extinction of a far-field laser beam by a single quantum dot
• Strongly focused light beams interacting with single atoms in free space
• Interfacing light and single atoms with a lens
• Atoms, dipole waves, and strongly focused light beams
• The conversion of phase to amplitude fluctuations of a light beam by an optical cavity

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• Excitation of a single atom with exponentially rising light pulses
• Time-resolved Scattering of a Single Photon by a Single Atom
• Efficient coupling to an optical resonator by exploiting time-reversal symmetry
• Reversing the temporal envelope of a heralded single photon using a cavity
• Time reversal symmetry in optics
• Perfect matching of reactive loads through complex frequencies: from circuital analysis to experiments
• Efficient generation of temporally shaped photons using nonlocal spectral filtering
• Excitation of absorbing exceptional points in the time domain
• Two-level atom excitation probability for single- and $N$-photon wavepackets
• Photon bandwidth dependence of light-matter interaction
• Time Reversal of Arbitrary Photonic Temporal Modes via Nonlinear Optical Frequency Conversion
• Absorption in quantum electrodynamics cavities in terms of a quantum jump operator
• Chiral excitation of a single atom by a single photon in a guided mode of a nanofiber
• Storage of RF photons in minimal conditions