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State-Insensitive Cooling and Trapping of Single Atoms in an Optical Cavity

J. McKeever, J. R. Buck, A. D. Boozer, A. Kuzmich, H. -C. Naegerl, D. M. Stamper-Kurn, H. J. Kimble

quant-pharXiv:quant-ph/0211013

Abstract

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

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