Abstract

The nature of the fluorescent light emitted by laser-cooled atoms is determined by atomic dynamics providing a rich source of information for an noninvasive study. It was demonstrated in [1] that intensity correlations can be used for investigation on atomic transport phenomena in laser fields on the scale of the optical wavelength. We demonstrate here that combining intensity correlation measurements with single atom trapping allows one to study atom-field interaction at all relevant time scale. As a first example we have studied single neutral atoms confined in a magneto-optical trap.

© 1998 IEEE