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arXiv · 1304.3761

Excitation of a single atom with exponentially rising light pulses

Syed Abdullah Aljunid·Gleb Maslennikov·Yimin Wang·Dao Hoang Lan·Valerio Scarani·Christian Kurtsiefer
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Abstract

We investigate the interaction between a single atom and optical pulses in a coherent state with a controlled temporal envelope. In a comparison between a rising exponential and a square envelope, we show that the rising exponential envelope leads to a higher excitation probability for fixed low average photon numbers, in accordance to a time-reversed Weisskopf-Wigner model. We characterize the atomic transition dynamics for a wide range of the average photon numbers, and are able to saturate the optical transition of a single atom with ~50 photons in a pulse by a strong focusing technique. For photon numbers of ~1000 in a 15ns long pulse, we clearly observe Rabi oscillations.

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Syed Abdullah Aljunid, Gleb Maslennikov, Yimin Wang, Dao Hoang Lan, Valerio Scarani, Christian Kurtsiefer. 2013-04-13. Excitation of a single atom with exponentially rising light pulses. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.111.103001

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