Publications by authors named "Y Colombe"
We demonstrate an optical method for detecting the mechanical oscillations of an atom with single-phonon sensitivity. The measurement signal results from the interference between the light scattered by a trapped atomic ion and that of its mirror image. We detect the oscillations of the atom in the Doppler cooling limit and reconstruct average trajectories in phase space.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe present the design and construction of a new experimental apparatus for the trapping of single Ba ions in the center of curvature of an optical-quality hemispherical mirror. We describe the layout, fabrication, and integration of the full setup, consisting of a high-optical access monolithic "3D-printed" Paul trap, the hemispherical mirror, a diffraction-limited in-vacuum lens (NA = 0.7) for collection of atomic fluorescence, and a state-of-the art ultra-high vacuum vessel.
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- Far-field optical imaging techniques can accurately determine the position of small emitters and scatterers, despite limitations imposed by optical wavelengths.
- The precision in locating these emitters is crucial for various applications, including astronomy and super-resolution microscopy, as well as for manipulating quantum systems.
- This study reveals that spin-orbit coupling in light can cause significant errors in the positional estimation of certain emitters, which can vary greatly depending on the imaging conditions.
The generation and manipulation of entanglement between isolated particles has precipitated rapid progress in quantum information processing. Entanglement is also known to play an essential role in the optical properties of atomic ensembles, but fundamental effects in the controlled emission and absorption from small, well-defined numbers of entangled emitters in free space have remained unobserved. Here we present the control of the emission rate of a single photon from a pair of distant, entangled atoms into a free-space optical mode.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHigh precision, high numerical aperture mirrors are desirable for mediating strong atom-light coupling in quantum optics applications and can also serve as important reference surfaces for optical metrology. In this work we demonstrate the fabrication of highly-precise hemispheric mirrors with numerical aperture NA = 0.996.
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