A cavity array microscope for parallel single-atom interfacing

TL;DR

The paper introduces a scalable cavity array microscope platform that enables parallel, high-fidelity, non-destructive single-atom measurements across a large two-dimensional array, advancing quantum networking and hybrid atom-photon systems.

Contribution

It presents a novel free-space cavity array design with intra-cavity lenses, achieving high cooperativity and scalability without nanophotonics, enabling parallel atom-cavity interfacing.

Findings

Over 40 cavity modes coupled to individual atoms

Fast, non-destructive readout on millisecond timescales

Upcoming platform with over 500 cavities and improved finesse

Abstract

Neutral atom arrays and optical cavity QED systems have developed in parallel as central pillars of modern experimental quantum science. While each platform has demonstrated exceptional capabilities-such as high-fidelity quantum logic in atom arrays, and strong light-matter coupling in cavities-their combination holds promise for realizing fast and non-destructive atom measurement, building large-scale quantum networks, and engineering hybrid atom-photon Hamiltonians. However, to date, experiments integrating the two platforms have been limited to spatially interfacing the entire atom array with one global cavity mode, a configuration that constrains addressability, parallelism, and scalability. Here we introduce the cavity array microscope, an experimental platform where each individual atom is strongly coupled to its own individual cavity across a two-dimensional array of over 40 modes. Our approach requires no nanophotonic elements, and instead uses a new free-space cavity geometry with intra-cavity lenses to realize above-unity peak cooperativity with micron-scale mode waists and spacings, compatible with typical atom array length scales while keeping atoms far from dielectric surfaces. We achieve homogeneous atom-cavity coupling, and show fast, non-destructive, parallel readout on millisecond timescales, including through a fiber array as a proof-of-principle for networking applications. As an outlook, we realize a next-generation iteration of the platform with over 500 cavities and a nearly 10 times improvement in finesse. Our work unlocks the regime of many-cavity QED, and opens an unexplored frontier of large-scale quantum networking with atom arrays.