Trapped Ion Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics
Single trapped ions are a remarkable close realization of an ideal simple isolated quantum system. Over the last decades ion trapping experiments have demonstrated the power of full control over such a system in a wide range of experiments. From precision metrology, to time keeping, ion traps have set many records. Because of this degree of control it has been trapped ions on which many of the proof of principle experiments on quantum computing and quantum information have been performed.
We trap a singly charged Barium ion inside a high-finess optical resonator. The strong coupling provided by the optical resonator, also known as cavity, enables the controlled state mapping from a photon on to the atom. We study the behaviour of this coupled atom-photon system and explore new routes for using the cavity to cool the ion and to create a versatile atom-photon interface for quantum information