Programmable few-atom Bragg scattering and ground-state cooling in a cavity

Abstract

By integrating tweezer arrays with a high-cooperativity ring cavity with chiral atom-cavity coupling, we demonstrate highly directional Bragg scattering from a programmable number of atoms. Through accurate control of the interatomic distance, we observe a narrowing-down of the Bragg peak as we increase the atom number one by one. The observed high-contrast Bragg interference is enabled by cavity sideband cooling of both the radial and axial motions to near the ground state with phonon occupation numbers below 0.17 and 3.4, respectively. This new platform that integrates strong and controlled atom-light coupling into atomic arrays enables applications from programmable quantum optics to quantum metrology and computation.