Ground-State Cooling of a Single Atom in a High-Bandwidth Cavity

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates near-complete three-dimensional ground-state cooling of a single atom in a high-bandwidth cavity using Raman sideband transitions, enabling long atomic lifetimes for cavity QED experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a highly efficient method for three-dimensional ground-state cooling of a single atom in a high-bandwidth cavity, achieving near 90% ground state population.

Findings

90% motional ground state population achieved

Atomic lifetime exceeds 40 seconds in the cavity

Effective three-dimensional cooling demonstrated

Abstract

We report on vibrational ground-state cooling of a single neutral atom coupled to a high-bandwidth Fabry-P\'erot cavity. The cooling process relies on degenerate Raman sideband transitions driven by dipole trap beams, which confine the atoms in three dimensions. We infer a one-dimensional motional ground state population close to $90~\%$ by means of Raman spectroscopy. Moreover, lifetime measurements of a cavity-coupled atom exceeding 40 s imply three-dimensional cooling of the atomic motion, which makes this resource-efficient technique particularly interesting for cavity experiments with limited optical access.