Strong coupling of a single ion to an optical cavity

Understand

Strong coupling between an atom and an electromagnetic resonator is an important condition in cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED).

• While strong coupling in various physical systems has been achieved so far, it remained elusive for single atomic ions.
• In this paper we demonstrate for the first time the coupling of a single ion to an optical cavity with a coupling strength exceeding both atomic and cavity decay rates.
• We use cavity assisted Raman spectroscopy to precisely characterize the ion-cavity coupling strength and observe a spectrum featuring the normal mode splitting in the cavity transmission due to the ion-cavity interaction.