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Published Online February 26, 2004
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1095232

Reports

Submitted on December 31, 2003
Accepted on February 18, 2004

Deterministic Generation of Single Photons from One Atom Trapped in a Cavity

J. McKeever 1, A. Boca 1, A. D. Boozer 1, R. Miller 1, J. R. Buck 1, A. Kuzmich 1, H. J. Kimble 1*

1 Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics 12-33, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: hjkimble{at}caltech.edu.

A single Cesium atom trapped within the mode of an optical cavity is used to generate single photons on demand. The photon wavepackets are emitted as a Gaussian beam with temporal profile and repetition rate controlled by external driving fields. Each generation attempt is inferred to succeed with probability near unity, while the efficiency for creating an unpolarized photon in the total cavity output is 0.69 ± 0.10, as limited by passive cavity losses. An average of 1.4 x 104 photons are produced by each trapped atom. These results constitute an important step in quantum information science, for example toward the realization of distributed quantum networking.


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)