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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 40: Quanteneffekte: Interferenz und Korrelationen II

Q 40.4: Talk

Wednesday, March 4, 2009, 17:15–17:30, VMP 6 HS-E

Intensity-field correlation of single-atom resonance fluorescence — •Sebastian Gerber¹, Lukas Slodicka¹, Daniel Rotter¹, Jürgen Eschner², Howard Carmichael³, and Rainer Blatt¹ — ¹Experimentalphysik Innsbruck, Technikerstrasse 25, 6020 Innsbruck — ²ICFO-Institut de Ciències Fotòniques, 08860 Castelldefels (Barcelona), Spain — ³Department of Physics, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

We report measurements of an intensity-field correlation function of the resonance fluorescence of a single trapped Ba+ ion.

An Ba+ ion is loaded into a linear Paul trap and is continuously laser-cooled. Detection of a photon prepares the atom in its ground state and we observe its evolution under interaction with a laser field of well defined phase. We record the regression of the resonance fluorescence source field. This provides a direct measurement of the field of the radiating dipole of a single atom and exhibits a strong non-classical behavior. In the setup an interference measurement is conditioned on a fluorescence photon detection. Thus, the recorded third-order correlation function demonstrates an aspect of wave-particle duality at the single-atom, single-photon level.