Intensity-field correlation of single-atom resonance fluorescence.

We report measurements of an intensity-field correlation function of the resonance fluorescence of a single trapped 138Ba+ ion. Detection of a photon prepares the atom in its ground state, and we observe its subsequent 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 its strong nonclassical behavior. In the setup, an interference measurement is conditioned on the detection of a fluorescence photon.

[1]  R. H. Brown,et al.  A Test of a New Type of Stellar Interferometer on Sirius , 1956, Nature.

[2]  R. H. Brown,et al.  Correlation between Photons in two Coherent Beams of Light , 1956, Nature.

[3]  M. Scully,et al.  The Quantum Theory of Light , 1974 .

[4]  L. Mandel.  Squeezed States and Sub-Poissonian Photon Statistics , 1982 .

[5]  Vogel.  Squeezing and anomalous moments in resonance fluorescence. , 1991, Physical review letters.

[6]  Transient internal dynamics of a multilevel ion. , 1995, Physical review. A, Atomic, molecular, and optical physics.

[7]  L. Mandel,et al.  Optical Coherence and Quantum Optics , 1995 .

[8]  Carmichael,et al.  Giant violations of classical inequalities through conditional homodyne detection of the quadrature amplitudes of light , 2000, Physical review letters.

[9]  H. Carmichael,et al.  Quantum state reduction and conditional time evolution of wave-particle correlations in cavity QED. , 2000, Physical review letters.

[10]  F. Schmidt-Kaler,et al.  Motional sidebands and direct measurement of the cooling rate in the resonance fluorescence of a single trapped ion. , 2000, Physical review letters.

[11]  F. Schmidt-Kaler,et al.  Light interference from single atoms and their mirror images , 2001, Nature.

[12]  L. Orozco,et al.  Time-dependent electric field fluctuations at the subphoton level , 2002 .

[13]  P. Zoller,et al.  Laser-driven atoms in half-cavities , 2002 .

[14]  F. Schmidt-Kaler,et al.  Forces between a single atom and its distant mirror image. , 2003, Physical review letters.

[15]  Christoph Becher,et al.  Feedback cooling of a single trapped ion. , 2006, Physical review letters.

[16]  Photon correlation versus interference of single-atom fluorescence in a half-cavity. , 2006, Physical review letters.

[17]  H. Castro-Beltrán,et al.  Nonclassicality of resonance fluorescence via amplitude-intensity correlations , 2008 .