Observation of the Vacuum Rabi Spectrum for One Trapped Atom
Andreea Boca, Ryan Miller, Kevin M. Birnbaum, A. David. Boozer, J. McKeever, Harry J. Kimble · Physical Review Letters · 2004
The transmission spectrum for one atom strongly coupled to the field of a high finesse optical resonator is observed to exhibit a clearly resolved vacuum Rabi splitting characteristic of the normal modes in the eigenvalue spectrum of the atom-cavity system. A new Raman scheme for cooling atomic motion along the cavity axis enables a complete spectrum to be recorded for an individual atom trapped within the cavity mode, in contrast to all previous measurements in cavity QED that have required averaging over 10(3)-10(5) atoms.