Physics Today

Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics

Serge Haroche and Daniel Kleppner

Citation: Physics Today 42(1), 24 (1989); doi: 10.1063/1.881201

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 CAVITY QUANTUM
ELECTRODYNAMICS
A new generation of experiments shows that spontaneous
radiation from excited atoms can be greatly suppressed or
enhanced by placing the atoms between mirrors or in cavities.

Serge Horoche and Daniel Kleppner

Ever since Einstein demonstrated that spontaneous emis- The recent research on atom-vacuum interactions
sion must occur if matter and radiation are to achieve belongs to a new field of atomic physics and quantum
thermal equilibrium, physicists have generally believed optics called cavity quantum electrodynamics. In addition
that excited atoms inevitably radiate.1 Spontaneous to demonstrating dramatic changes in spontaneous emis-
emission is so fundamental that it is usually regarded as sion, cavity QED has led to the creation of new kinds of mi-
an inherent property of matter. This view, however, croscopic masers that operate with a single atom and a few
overlooks the fact that spontaneous emission is not a photons or with photons emitted in pairs in a two-photon
property of an isolated atom but of an atom-vacuum transition.
system. The most distinctive feature of such emission,
irreversibility, comes about because an infinity of vacuum Emission in free space
states is available to the radiated photon. If these states We can introduce cavity QED with a brief review of
are modified—for instance, by placing the excited atom spontaneous emission in free space. Consider a one-
between mirrors or in a cavity—spontaneous emission can electron atom with two electronic levels e and /"separated
be greatly inhibited or enhanced. by an energy interval Ee — Ef = fuo. Spontaneous emis-
Recently developed atomic and optical techniques sion appears as a jump of the electron from level e to level f
have made it possible to control and manipulate spontane- accompanied by the emission of a photon. This process can
ous emission (figure 1). Experiments have demonstrated be understood as resulting from the coupling of the atomic
that spontaneous emission can be virtually eliminated or electron to the electromagnetic field in its "vacuum" state.
else made to display features of reversibility: Instead of A radiation field in space is usually described in terms
radiatively decaying to a lower energy state, an atom can of an infinite set of harmonic oscillators, one for each mode
exchange energy periodically with a cavity. of radiation. The levels of this oscillator correspond to
states with 0, 1, 2, . . . , n photons of energy fuo. In its
ground state each oscillator has a "zero-point" energy
Serge Haroche is a professor of physics at the University of fio/2 associated with its quantum fluctuations.
Paris VI and at the Ecole Normale Superieure, in Paris, and at The rms vacuum electric-field amplitude £ vac in a
Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut. Daniel mode of frequency a> is [fc/(2e0V)]1/2, where e0 is the
Kleppner is Lester Wolfe Professor of Physics at the permittivity of free space, V is the size of an arbitrary
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, quantization volume and the units are SI. The coupling of
Massachusetts. the atom to each field mode is described by the elementary
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24 PHYSICS TODAY JANUARY 1989 © 1989 American Insriture of Physic
 Resonant superconducting cavity.
The cylindrical niobium cavity, situated
between the two shiny, rectangular
blocks at the top of the apparatus, is
used for cavity QED experiments on
Rydberg atoms at the Ecole Normale
Superieure in Paris. It is cooled by a
helium cryostat, the large cylinder at the
bottom of the photograph. The atomic
beam passes along the cavity axis,
entering and leaving through small
holes. Figure 1

frequency source of irreversibility is the continuum of field modes

resonantly coupled to the atom. The vacuum field acts as
Jfl
a gigantic "reservoir" in which the atomic excitation
Here Def is the matrix element of the electric dipole of the decays away.
atom between the two levels, and flef, which is often
referred to as the Rabi frequency of the vacuum, is the fre- Emission between mirrors
quency at which the atom and the field would exchange The mode structure of the vacuum field is dramatically
energy if there were only a single mode of the field. An es- altered in a cavity whose size is comparable to the
sential feature of spontaneous emission in free space, wavelength. The schematic diagram in figure 2 shows an
however, is that the atom can radiate into any mode that atom confined between two plane, parallel mirrors with
satisfies the conservation of energy and momentum. The separation d. For an electric field polarized parallel to the
time of emission and the particular mode in which the mirrors no mode exists unless A < 2d: As A is increased,
photon is observed are random variables. the lowest-order mode cuts off abruptly when A exceeds 2d.
The probability Fo of photon emission per unit time, As a result, an excited atom whose radiation arises from
more familiarly called the Einstein ^4-coefficient, is an electric dipole moment oscillating parallel to the
proportional to the square of the frequency fle/- and to the mirrors becomes infinitely long-lived when A > 2d. Classi-
mode density pn{(o), the number of modes available per unit cally, the electron orbit of such an atom is essentially
frequency interval. The mode density is given by the parallel to the mirrors; we call this a polarization. By
expressionpa(a>) — aPV/v2^, where it is assumed that the contrast, for polarization normal to the mirrors—n
quantization volume Vis large compared to A:i, or (2irc/cof. polarization—there is no such cutoff and the excited state
The probability Fo is given by the Fermi "golden rule": decays rapidly. Such simple cavity structures are easy to
build in the microwave domain and can now be realized
down to the micron size for optical fields, as the
photograph in figure 2 shows.
The influence of boundary conditions on atomic
The probability P,Xt) of finding an atom still excited at radiation was pointed out long ago, and a considerable
time t after its preparation in state e is exp( — rot). Such body of literature exists on the subject.2 Until recently,
an exponential decay law describes an irreversible process however, experimental evidence for these effects had been
that leads the atom irrevocably to its ground state. The scarce because of the difficulties of preparing, controlling
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PHYSICS TODAY JANUARY 19S9 25
 Parallel mirrors 1.1-microns apart used for
cavity QED experiments at Yale University.
An excited atom placed in the cavity between
the mirrors will tend to remain excited. The
gap was built for optical frequencies by
placing a thin metallic spacer between two flat
mirrors. The light areas in the electron
micrograph (a) are the mirror substrates,
which are silica blocks coated on their inner
surfaces with gold. The schematic diagram (b)
shows an excited atom between two parallel
mirrors. The atom remains permanently
excited if the mirror spacing d is smaller than
half the atomic transition wavelength,
provided the atomic dipole is parallel to the
mirror surfaces. Figure 2

and observing the emission of isolated atoms or molecules the ratio A/2d is varied around the critical value of 1. The
near surfaces. In the early 1970s Karl H. Drexhage at the large increase in transmission when A exceeds 2d is clear
University of Marburg, Germany, carried out pioneering evidence of the inhibition of spontaneous emission. The
work on the fluorescence of organic dyes deposited on lifetime is at least 20 times longer than it is in free space.
dielectric films over a metallic mirror.3 He observed The decrease for A/2d> 1.015 is an artifact caused by the
alterations in the rate and pattern of the emission, but the ionization of the atoms by the electric field.
open geometry of his experimental setup prevented any The experimenters at Yale6 suppressed spontaneous
major reduction of the spontaneous emission rate. More emission in the near infrared using a geometry similar to
recently several groups have studied isolated atomic the MIT experiment but with the much smaller waveguide
radiators in cavities, and have demonstrated the inhibi- structure shown in figure 2a. The Yale experiment
tion of spontaneous emission at wavelengths from the employed a cesium atomic beam, excited into the low-lying
microwave to the optical. A group at the University of 5d level. The inhibited transition was 5ci->6/> at a
Washington performed the first in this generation of wavelength of 3.5 microns, far beyond the cutoff wave-
experiments, observing the radiation damping of an length of 2.2 microns. Excited atoms propagated through
isolated electron undergoing cyclotron motion in an the tunnel for about 13 natural lifetimes without apprecia-
electromagnetic trap whose walls formed a high-mode ble decay. Application of a small magnetic field to change
cavity. They discovered large changes in the cyclotron the orientation of the atomic dipoles demonstrated the
damping rate that depended on the position of the electron anisotropy of spontaneous emission between mirrors. If
with respect to the trap's nodal pattern.4 the magnetic field has a component parallel to the mirror
Physicists at MIT, Yale and the University of Rome surface, the dipole precesses so that it acquires a perpen-
have carried out experiments using the parallel-mirror dicular component. After rotating through only a small
geometry of figure 2. The MIT experiment demonstrated fraction of a turn the dipole can spontaneously radiate a ir-
the inhibition of spontaneous emission from Rydberg polarized photon. Figure 4 shows the transmission of
states of cesium atoms in a beam.5 The atoms radiated at a excited atoms through the microtunnel as a function of the
wavelength of about 0.4 mm as they passed between two angle between the magnetic field and the normal to the
20-cm-long aluminum mirrors separated by approximate- mirrors: The large change in the lifetime induced by the
ly 0.2 mm. Just before entering the "cavity," the atoms magnetic precession is evident. In another experiment,
were prepared in such a way that their radiating dipoles carried out at the University of Rome, the radiative
were strictly parallel to the mirrors, much like the lifetime of dye molecules at optical frequencies was
"circular" state sketched in figure 2. The atoms surviving lengthened using a cavity formed by plane, parallel
in the initial quantum state were detected at the cavity mirrors.7
exit by ionizing them in a small electric field. Atoms that
underwent spontaneous emission were transferred to a Resonant cavity emission
more tightly bound level that remained un-ionized. Just as a cavity below cutoff suppresses vacuum fluctu-
Figure 3 shows how the signal of the atoms changes as ations, a resonant cavity enhances them. How an atom
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26 PHYSICS TODAY
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JANUARY 1989
behaves in a resonant cavity depends on the ratio of the cited state at time t, assuming it was prepared in this state
vacuum Rabi frequency to the cavity bandwidth, ftc/-/A<yc. at time 0. The probability that there are n photons in the
The cavity bandwidth is most conveniently described by cavity is described by the distribution function p(n), and
the quality factor Q, which is given by cj/A<yc. The the cavity is taken to have an infinite quality factor Q.
reciprocal of A<uc is effectively the density of modes "seen"
by the atom in the cavity; alternatively, it is the lifetime of Pe{t) =
a photon in the cavity. In open structures such as the one
shown in figure 2a, edge diffraction limits the quality
factor Q. By employing spherical mirrors to create a Spontaneous emission corresponds to an initially empty
Fabry-Perot resonator, Q can be enhanced substantially. cavity: p(0) = 1 . A classical field corresponds to a narrow
In the microwave regime, closed cavities are practical photon distribution peaked around a large average photon
(figure 1). A superconducting microwave cavity can number n. (The Rabi frequency Cler^n + 1 is roughly
achieve values of Q up to 10H and photon storage times of a proportional to the square root of n, that is, to the electric
fraction of a second. field amplitude in the mode.) For ordinary atoms or
In a low-Q cavity the emitted photon is damped molecules, Clef is intrinsically small, and observing the
rapidly and an atom undergoes radiative decay much like Rabi oscillation requires an enormous average photon
it does in free space, though at an enhanced rate. The number h. For Rydberg states, on the other hand, ilef can
radiation rate in a cavity of volume V is be relatively large—103 to 106 sec"' for principal quantum
numbers around 40—and the Rabi oscillations become
observable even with h = 0.
Physicists at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum
Optics near Munich have observed Rabi oscillations
Compared with the rate in free space, the emission rate is induced by a small thermal field in the cavity.10 The
increased by the ratio QA.3/V, which can be large.
Physicists at Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris have
observed this regime of enhanced spontaneous emission in
the millimeter wave regime for Rydberg atoms of sodium
coupled to a Fabry-Perot cavity.8 The spontaneous
emission rate was enhanced by a factor of approximately
500.
In the optical regime, physicists in the Rome group7
and at the MIT Spectroscopy Laboratory9 have observed
effects of both enhanced and inhibited spontaneous
emission. The MIT experimenters employed a spherical
Fabry-Perot resonator. A laser within the resonator
excited an atomic beam of ytterbium, whichfluorescesat a
wavelength of 556 nm. As the experimenters tuned the
resonator through successive resonances, the radiation
rate into the solid angle subtended by the resonator was al-
ternately inhibited by a factor of 42 and enhanced by a fac-
tor of 19.
The regime of very high Q, where Cler/Ao}c > 1,
manifests totally new behavior. The radiation remains in
the cavity so long that there is a high probability it will be 0.975 0.98 0.99 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03
reabsorbed by the atom before it dissipates. Spontaneous ATOMIC WAVELENGTH A/2i
emission becomes reversible as the atom and the field
exchange excitation at the rate ilef. Such behavior is a Survival of excited Rydberg atoms moving in
well-known feature of the interaction of an atom with a a gap between mirrors, plotted as a function
classical monochromatic field. These so called "Rabi of the wavelength for spontaneous emission in
oscillations" are familiar in nuclear magnetic resonance the vicinity of the cavity cutoff.5 The signal
and optical transient experiments. In cavity QED, how- comes from excited atoms detected at the
ever, the atom couples to its own one-photon field without cavity exit. The atomic wavelength X is varied
any externally applied radiation. by applying a small electric field to the atoms.
The link between classical Rabi oscillations and The sharp increase in survival when the ratio
spontaneous Rabi oscillations is described by the equation A/2d is 1 is caused by the inhibition of
below for the probability Pe (t) of finding the atom in its ex- spontaneous emission. Figure 3
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PHYSICS TODAY JANUARY 1989 27
 Transmission of excited atoms through
a mirror gap causing a cutoff of
spontaneous emission in the infrared
regime around 3.5 microns. 6 The gap
structure is shown in figure 2a. The
signal is plotted against the angle
between a small applied magnetic field
and the normal to the mirrors. The
diagrams at the bottom of the figure
illustrate the magnetic field
orientations defined as 0°, 90° and
180°. At zero angle the atoms are
polarized parallel to the mirrors and the
large transmission of excited atoms is
evidence of inhibited spontaneous
emission. When the angle is nonzero,
ORIENTATION OF MAGNETIC FIELD (degrees) Larmor precession reorients the atomic
dipoles so that they can emit ir-
polarized radiation, which can
propagate in the gap. As a result, the
atoms radiate spontaneously and fail to
reach the detector in their excited
state. Figure 4

photon number distribution is then given by the Planck It is interesting to analyze how the field grows in an
formula: p(n) = [1 — exp( — fico/kB Tj\ exp( — nfuolk^ T), ideal micromaser operating at 0 K with a fixed atom-
where kB is the Boltzmann constant. The pattern of cavity interaction time tint. Assume there is an ideal
oscillations is a complicated function of time resulting cavity (infinite Q) and an ideal field ionization detector
from the beating between the elementary Rabi frequen- that allows us to determine the state e or /'in which each
cies weighted by the corresponding values oipin). Figure 5 atom leaves the cavity. After the first atom (atom # 1) has
shows the probability Pe(t) as a function of the time of crossed the resonator, the state of the atom-field system is
interaction with a cavity field containing an average of 2 a linear superposition of states |e,0> and \f,V)- (The
thermal photons. The cavity operated at 21.6 GHz at a notation indicates an atom in state e correlated with 0
temperature T of 2.5 K. The experimenters used Rydberg photons in the cavity and an atom in state f correlated
states of rubidium—the 63P3/2^61Z)5/2 transition. The with one photon.) Using standard notation we can write
flux of atoms crossing the cavity was low, and so the cavity
field relaxed to thermal equilibrium between successive |*,> = cos(ncftint 12) |e,0> + sin(fteftint 12) \fX>
atoms. In this way, each atom probed the thermal field at If fleftint is small, 0.1 for example, there is a large
2.5 K. probability of finding atom # 1 in state e. If this occurs,
Rabi oscillations induced by small thermal fields in a then immediately thereafter |*!> = |e,0>, and so the field
cavity can display "quantum collapse and revival."11 will contain exactly zero photons. The next atom will then
After a few periods the various terms corresponding to interact with an empty cavity. At some time, however, a
different values of n in the expression for the probability first atom, say atom N, will be found in state |/>, correlated
Pe(t) interfere destructively, and there is no further trace to the instantaneous "appearance" of one photon in the
of a beat structure. Some time later, however, the terms cavity. Atom (N + 1) will then undergo a different
interfere constructively and the beating revives. The evolution: The state of the system "atom (TV + 1) + cavity
Munich group has obtained evidence for this novel field" after atom (7V+ 1) has left the cavity will be
phenomenon.10
The one-atom maser
If the rate of atoms crossing a cavity exceeds the cavity + sin(nefj2tint 12)
damping rate co/Q, the photon released by each atom is Continuous monitoring of the system would reveal a kind
stored long enough to interact with the next atom. The of random walk of the photon number: Each time an atom
atom-field coupling becomes stronger and stronger as the is detected in state |/> the field has gained one photon.
field builds up, eventually evolving into a steady state. The process is essentially random because the probability
The system is a new kind of maser, which operates with ex- for an atom to flip from e to /"is governed by quantum me-
ceedingly small numbers of atoms and photons.12 Atomic chanical chance. It is a random process with memory,
fluxes as small as 100 atoms per second have generated however, because the probability law for each step
maser action. For such a lowfluxthere is never more than depends on the outcome of the previous steps. This simple
a single atom in the resonator—in fact, most of the time build-up process has been studied theoretically and
the cavity is empty. These "micromaser" devices were provides one of the simplest illustrations of the quantum
operated for the first time at the Max Planck Institute for theory of measurement.14 The field can be viewed as a
Quantum Optics.13 quantum harmonic oscillator. The two-level atoms cross-
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 0.3
50 100 150
ing the cavity play a double role: They modify thefieldby TIME OF FLIGHT THROUGH CAVITY (microseconds)
the quantum mechanical "kicks" they deliver, and they
serve as measurement devices that detect the field as it Probability of finding an a t o m in the upper
grows. A steady state is reached if there exists a photon level of a two-state system as a function of the
number n0 such that the quantity (Clef^ln0 + 1 tint )/2 is an a t o m - c a v i t y interaction t i m e . 1 6 The data
integral multiple of n. The photon number remains w e r e taken in a cavity tuned to 21.6 G H z , the
trapped with the value n0 because each subsequent atom frequency of the 6 3 P 3 / 2 ^ 6 1 D 5 / 2 transition of
will leave the cavity in the e state. Such a radiation state Rb 8 5 . The curve is theoretical. Radiation is
is highly nonclassical, for the field has a precisely defined induced by the thermal field in the cavity at
energy but a completely random phase. It has no 2.5 K. The Rabi oscillation is clearly
amplitude fluctuations, whereas an ordinary electromag- observable. Figure 5
netic field has quantum-limited intensity fluctuations
proportional to -Jh. Such nonclassical states of microwave
radiation fields are now being studied at the Max Planck non can be understood as a frequency-pulling effect that
Institute for Quantum Optics. occurs when an atomic "oscillator" interacts with a
reactive cavity. Quantum mechanically, one can analyze
The two-photon maser. it in terms of the effect of the cavity walls on the virtual-
At the Ecole Normale Superieure physicists have created photon exchange processes. The metallic boundaries alter
a microwave maser that uses a Rydberg atom-cavity the modes of the vacuum field around the atom and affect
system but that operates on a two-photon transition.15 In not only real photon emission—that is, spontaneous
two-photon emission an atom simultaneously radiates a emission rates—but also the virtual process responsible
pair of photons with frequencies <y, and co2 while jumping for radiative energy shifts.
from an initial level e to a final level f. Energy A superficial analysis of the experiments on the
conservation requires that Ee — Ef = #(&>, + a>2). Because inhibition of spontaneous emission could lead one to
two-photon emission is a second-order process, it usually believe that suppressing the natural line width might give
occurs only from metastable levels that are forbidden to rise to arbitrarily narrow spectral lines and ultrahigh
radiate by a single-photon process because of some spectroscopic resolution. The fact that the atomic energy
selection rule. If one- and two-photon emission channels levels are at the same time shifted from their "free space"
are both open for the decay of an atomic level, the one-pho- positions reveals that one is really carrying out spectrosco-
ton process dominates and two-photon effects are negligi- py on an atom "dressed" by the cavity vacuum, which is
ble. In the level configuration of figure 6a, which is often different from the atom "dressed" by the free-field
found in the structure of Rydberg atoms, the upper level e vacuum. Precise experiments are now beginning to
can decay by one-photon emission to the opposite parity observe these effects. For example, experiments on
level i or by two-photon emission to the same parity level f. individual trapped electrons are reaching the point
In free space the former process is overwhelmingly more where cavity-induced shifts are affecting measurements of
probable. In a cavity that is resonant at a frequency to the electron magnetic moment.17
equal to (Ee — Ef)/2fi, however, the spontaneous emission The group at the MIT Spectroscopy Laboratory has
of two "degenerate" photons at frequency w is enhanced, observed frequency shifts caused by cavity effects at
whereas the one-photon rate is suppressed. optical wavelengths, using barium atoms in a concentric
This effect has been experimentally demonstrated in optical resonator.18 They saw changes in both the
a beam of rubidium atoms prepared in the 40S state. The transition frequency and the linewidth caused by en-
atoms traversed a superconducting cavity tuned to 68.4 hanced and inhibited spontaneous emission.
GHz, half the frequency of the 40S-39S transition. The Cavity QED has potential applications to the study of
resonant transfer of atoms between these two levels, nonlinear dynamics in small systems. A tenuous beam of
shown in figure 6b, demonstrates two-photon maser atoms crossing a high-Q cavity one at a time is a highly
action. This new quantum oscillator displays unique nonlinear system with feedback—the field radiated by one
features because the photons are emitted in pairs. For atom reacts strongly back on the next atom. These are the
instance, startup of the system is characterized by long ingredients required for chaos in a classical system. When
delays, very different from the prompt startup of a one- solving the classical equation of motion for such a system,
16
photon maser. one finds chaotic behavior. Studying the quantum behav-
ior of the system in the regime where the classical model
Other cavity QED effects exhibits bifurcations and chaos may provide insight into
In addition to changing the radiation rate of atoms, atom- the connection between quantum mechanics and nonlin-
cavity coupling also induces energy shifts. This phenome- ear classical mechanics.
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PHYSICS TODAY JANUARY 1989 29
 40S t/
> = 68.41587 GHz

.39P.

39S, /2 39 MHz

cr
LU

<
cr
111

0.2 -
LJJ

interesting, and simple atom-cavity systems are good

0 _
candidates for studying it.
68 415.80 68 415.85 68 415.90 68 415.95
CAVITY RESONANT FREQUENCY (megahertz)
References
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Two-photon Rydberg maser.15 The maser tion, see D. Ter Haar, The Old Quantum Theory, Pergamon,
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