The integration of photonic crystal waveguides with atom arrays in optical tweezers

TL;DR

This paper presents an advanced experimental setup integrating atom arrays with photonic crystal waveguides, enabling strong quantum interactions between light and matter for quantum information and many-body physics research.

Contribution

The work introduces novel techniques for efficient light coupling, chip bonding, and precise delivery of atom arrays to photonic structures, overcoming key experimental challenges.

Findings

Successful integration of atom arrays with photonic crystal waveguides

Enhanced coupling efficiency between atoms and guided light

Potential for exploring strong photon-mediated interactions

Abstract

Integrating nanophotonics and cold atoms has drawn increasing interest in recent years due to diverse applications in quantum information science and the exploration of quantum many-body physics. For example, dispersion-engineered photonic crystal waveguides (PCWs) permit not only stable trapping and probing of ultracold neutral atoms via interactions with guided-mode light, but also the possibility to explore the physics of strong, photon-mediated interactions between atoms, as well as atom-mediated interactions between photons. While diverse theoretical opportunities involving atoms and photons in 1-D and 2-D nanophotonic lattices have been analyzed, a grand challenge remains the experimental integration of PCWs with ultracold atoms. Here we describe an advanced apparatus that overcomes several significant barriers to current experimental progress with the goal of achieving strong quantum interactions of light and matter by way of single-atom tweezer arrays strongly coupled to photons in 1-D and 2-D PCWs. Principal technical advances relate to efficient free-space coupling of light to and from guided modes of PCWs, silicate bonding of silicon chips within small glass vacuum cells, and deterministic, mechanical delivery of single-atom tweezer arrays to the near fields of photonic crystal waveguides.