Single atom trapping and control inside a nanosize photonic crystal cavity

TL;DR

This paper explores trapping and controlling a single atom inside a nanoscale photonic crystal cavity, demonstrating potential for quantum manipulation with cavity-enhanced cooling and loading techniques.

Contribution

It introduces a method for trapping and controlling a single atom within a nanosize photonic crystal cavity using mode detuning and resonant control.

Findings

Atom can be trapped using mode detuning.

Atomic motion can be cooled via cavity-enhanced rf Sisyphus cooling.

Atom can be loaded from optical tweezers into the cavity.

Abstract

We analyze a possibility to trap, control and load a single atom inside a nanosize cavity formed in a photonic crystal. We consider a 1D nanobeam crystal having two nearly degenerate localized modes with mode maxima at the central air gap, forming a cavity with a mode volume <\lambda^{3}. For this system we found that an atom can be trapped by a mode detuned from an atomic transition and controled by the second resonant mode. We show that atomic motion can be cooled using cavity-enhanced rf Sisyphus cooling. We also discuss how an atom can be loaded inside the nanosize crystal air gap from short-wavelength optical tweezers.