Abstract
Optical cavities are widely used to enhance the interaction between atoms and light. Typical designs using a geometrically symmetric structure in the near-concentric regime face a tradeoff between mechanical stability and high single-atom cooperativity. To overcome this limitation, we design and implement a geometrically asymmetric standing-wave cavity. This structure, with mirrors of very different radii of curvature, allows strong atom-light coupling while exhibiting good stability against misalignment. We observe effective cooperativities ranging from to by shifting the location of the atoms in the cavity mode. By loading atoms directly from a mirror magneto-optical trap into a one-dimensional optical lattice along the cavity mode, we produce atomic ensembles with collective cooperativities up to . This system opens a way to preparing spin squeezing for an optical lattice clock and to accessing a range of nonclassical collective states.
- Received 17 November 2018
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.99.013437
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