Fast Control of Atom-Light Interaction in a Narrow Linewidth Cavity

Abstract

We propose a method to exploit high-finesse optical resonators for light-assisted coherent manipulation of atomic ensembles, overcoming the limit imposed by the finite response time of the cavity. The key element of our scheme is to rapidly switch the interaction between the atoms and the cavity field with an auxiliary control process as, for example, the light shift induced by an optical beam. The scheme is applicable to other atomic species, both in trapped and free fall configurations, and can be adopted to control the internal and/or external atomic degrees of freedom. Our method will open new possibilities in cavity-aided atom interferometry and in the preparation of highly nonclassical atomic states.

Multi-photon Atom Interferometry via cavity-enhanced Bragg Diffraction

“…Such a response degrades the shape of the light pulses used to coherently manipulate the matter waves [28]. While these effects were considered, up to now, as a fundamental issue limiting the use of optical cavities for atom interferometry [26], novel schemes were recently proposed to circumvent this problem using light-shift engineering [29] and intracavity frequency modulation on circulating pulses [30]. To date, an experimental demonstration is of great interest to sweep the resonance of the 780 nm to generate our pulse across the width of the beam (see 4.2.2 for theory, and 4.3.2 for experimental results).…”