Abstract
We investigate the suitability of toroidal microcavities for strong-coupling cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED). Numerical modeling of the optical modes demonstrate a significant reduction of the modal volume with respect to the whispering gallery modes of dielectric spheres, while retaining the high-quality factors representative of spherical cavities. The extra degree of freedom of toroid microcavities can be used to achieve improved cavity QED characteristics. Numerical results for atom-cavity coupling strength , critical atom number , and critical photon number for cesium are calculated and shown to exceed values currently possible using Fabry-Perot cavities. Modeling predicts coupling rates exceeding and critical atom numbers approaching in optimized structures. Furthermore, preliminary experimental measurements of toroidal cavities at a wavelength of indicate that quality factors in excess of can be obtained in a principal diameter cavity, which would result in strong-coupling values of .
3 More- Received 27 August 2004
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.71.013817
©2005 American Physical Society