Feedback Cooling of a Single Neutral Atom

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates feedback cooling of a single rubidium atom in an optical resonator, achieving lower temperatures and longer storage times than without feedback, offering advantages over traditional laser cooling methods.

Contribution

The authors present a novel feedback cooling technique for a single neutral atom that improves temperature and storage time with fewer optical requirements.

Findings

Achieved atom temperature of about 160 μK.

Extended atom storage time to approximately 1 second.

Reduced atomic position uncertainty through feedback.

Abstract

We demonstrate feedback cooling of the motion of a single rubidium atom trapped in a high-finesse optical resonator to a temperature of about 160 \mu K. Time-dependent transmission and intensity-correlation measurements prove the reduction of the atomic position uncertainty. The feedback increases the 1/e storage time into the one second regime, 30 times longer than without feedback. Feedback cooling therefore rivals state-of-the-art laser cooling, but with the advantages that it requires less optical access and exhibits less optical pumping.