Abstract
A major trend within the field of cavity QED is to boost the interaction strength between the cavity field and the atomic internal degrees of freedom of the trapped atom by decreasing the mode volume of the cavity. In such systems, it is natural to achieve strong atom-cavity coupling, where the coherent interaction strength exceeds the cavity linewidth, while the linewidth exceeds the atomic trap frequency. While most work focuses on coupling of photons to the internal degrees of freedom, additional rich dynamics can occur by considering the atomic motional degree of freedom as well. In particular, we show that such a system is a natural candidate to explore an interesting regime of quantum optomechanics, where the zero-point atomic motion yields a cavity frequency shift larger than its linewidth (so-called single-photon optomechanical strong coupling), but simultaneously where the motional frequency cannot be resolved by the cavity. We show that this regime can result in a number of remarkable phenomena, such as strong entanglement between the atomic wave function and the scattering properties of single incident photons, or an anomalous mechanism where the atomic motion can significantly heat up due to single-photon scattering, even if the atom is trapped tightly within the Lamb-Dicke limit.
Highlights
In optomechanics much progress has been made improving the control over the interaction between photons and phonons at the quantum level [1]
In one remarkable theoretical work [7], it has been predicted that the combination of sideband resolution and single-photon optomechanical strong coupling – where the zero-point motional uncertainty induces a shift in the optical resonance frequency larger than the cavity linewidth – would enable the generation of non-classical, anti-bunched light
To provide an intuitive picture, strong coupling within cavity QED [22, 23] implies that a point-like atom produces a shift in the cavity resonance frequency that is larger than the cavity linewidth, when the atom is situated at a cavity anti-node
Summary
We further proceed to derive an effective master equation describing the atomic motion when the cavity is externally driven by a coherent state with photon number flux E02 and frequency ωL. We note that such a procedure would give rise to, e.g., the usual optical cooling and heating rates in a conventional optomechanical system [27, 5, 6]. The general Lindblad operator L3γD for spontaneous emission into three dimensions of the atom at a rate γ reads [28]: L3γDρ γ 2 σeeρ + ρσee − 2. Optomechanical strong coupling using a single atom coupled to a cavity
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