Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics: Scientific American

Atoms and photons in small cavities behave completely unlike those in free space. Their quirks illustrate some of the principles of quantum physics and make possible the development of new sensors

By Serge Haroche and Jean-Michel Raimond

"Diagram of a trapped atom between two plates with photons shown as squiggly arrows"

EXCITED ATOM between two mirrors cannot emit a photon. Image: Jared Schneidman/JSD

Fleeting, spontaneous transitions are ubiquitous in the quantum world. Once they are under way, they seem as uncontrollable and as irreversible as the explosion of fireworks. Excited atoms, for example, discharge their excess energy in the form of photons that escape to infinity at the speed of light. Yet during the past decade, this inevitability has begun to yield. Atomic physicists have created devices that can slow spontaneous transitions, halt them, accelerate them or even reverse them entirely.

Recent advances in the fabrication of small superconducting cavities and other microscopic structures as well as novel techniques for laser manipulation of atoms make such feats possible. By placing an atom in a small box with reflecting walls that constrain the wavelength of any photons it emits or absorbs—and thus the changes in state that it may undergo—investigators can cause single atoms to emit photons ahead of schedule, stay in an excited state indefinitely or block the passage of a laser beam. With further refinement of this technology, cavity quantum electrodynamic (QED) phenomena may find use in the generation and precise measurement of electromagnetic fields consisting of only a handful of photons. Cavity QED processes engender an intimate correlation between the states of the atom and those of the field, and so their study provides new insights into quantum aspects of the interaction between light and matter.

To understand the interaction between an excited atom and a cavity, one must keep in mind two kinds of physics: the classical and the quantum. The emission of light by an atom bridges both worlds. Light waves are moving oscillations of electric and magnetic fields. In this respect, they represent a classical event. But light can also be described in terms of photons, discretely emitted quanta of energy. Sometimes the classical model is best, and sometimes the quantum one offers more understanding.

When an electron in an atom jumps from a high energy level to a lower one, the atom emits a photon that carries away the difference in energy between the two levels. This photon typically has a wavelength of a micron or less, corresponding to a frequency of a few hundred terahertz and an energy of about one electron volt. Any given excited state has a natural lifetime—similar to the half-life of a radioactive element—that determines the odds that the excited atom will emit a photon during a given time interval. The probability that an atom will remain excited decreases along an exponential curve: to one half after one tick of the internal clock, one quarter after two ticks, one eighth after three and so on.

In classical terms, the outermost electron in an excited atom is the equivalent of a small antenna, oscillating at frequencies corresponding to the energy of transitions to less excited states, and the photon is simply the antenna's radiated field. When an atom absorbs light and jumps to a higher energy level, it acts as a receiving antenna instead.

If the antenna is inside a reflecting cavity, however, its behavior changes—as anyone knows who has tried to listen to a radio broadcast while driving through a tunnel. As the car and its receiving antenna pass underground, they enter a region where the long wavelengths of the radio waves are cut off. The incident waves interfere destructively with those that bounce off the steel-reinforced concrete walls of the tunnel. In fact, the radio waves cannot propagate unless the tunnel walls are separated by more than half a wavelength. This is the minimal width that permits a standing wave with at least one crest, or field maximum, to build up—just as the vibration of a violin string reaches a maximum at the middle of the string and vanishes at the ends. What is true for reception also holds for emission: a confined antenna cannot broadcast at long wavelengths.

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