State-insensitive cooling and trapping of single atoms in an optical cavity

Abstract

Single cesium atoms are cooled and trapped inside a small optical cavity by way of a novel far-off-resonance dipole-force trap, with observed lifetimes of 2-3 s. Trapped atoms are observed continuously via transmission of a strongly coupled probe beam, with individual events lasting similar or equal to1 s. The loss of successive atoms from the trap N greater than or equal to 3 → 2 → 1 → 0 is thereby monitored in real time. Trapping, cooling, and interactions with strong coupling are enabled by the trap potential, for which the center-of-mass motion is only weakly dependent on the atom's internal state.

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