High finesse bow-tie cavity for strong atom-photon coupling in Rydberg arrays

We report a high-finesse bow-tie cavity designed for atomic physics experiments with Rydberg atom arrays. The cavity has a finesse of 51,000 and a waist of 7.1 mu m at the cesium D2 line (852 nm). With these parameters, the cavity is expected to induce strong coupling between a single atom and a single photon, corresponding to a cooperativity per traveling mode of 35 at the cavity waist. To trap and image atoms, the cavity setup utilizes two in-vacuum aspheric lenses with a numerical aperture (NA) of 0.35 and is capable of housing NA = 0.5 microscope objectives. In addition, the large atom-mirror distance (greater than or similar to 1.5 cm) provides good optical access and minimizes stray electric fields at the position of the atoms. This cavity setup can operate in tandem with a Rydberg array platform, creating a fully connected system for quantum simulation and computation.(c) 2022 Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Optica Open Access Publishing Agreement

Automated summary

We report a high-finesse bow-tie cavity designed for atomic physics experiments with Rydberg atom arrays. The cavity has a high finesse and small waist, enabling strong coupling effects. The cavity setup utilizes lenses to trap and image atoms, providing good optical access and minimizing stray electric fields. This cavity setup can be used in conjunction with a Rydberg array platform for quantum simulation and computation.