Abstract

Recently, cavity QED has produced spectacular advances exploiting the interaction of atoms and photons. A prominent example is the observation of atomic trajectories via the cavity field.^1,2 In some cases however, the well determined atom- field coupling in those experiments is offset by the lack of control over the motion of the atom. This is detrimental, for example, to the implementation of deterministic dynamics in the system, since neither the arrival time nor the position (and hence the strength of interaction) of an atom is known in advance. These problems are avoided when a single trapped ion interacts with the optical field, as is the case in our cavity-QED system.

© 2001 Optical Society of America