Eur. Phys. J. D 53, 107-111 (2009)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2009-00093-9

Towards a monolithic optical cavity for atom detection and manipulation

¹ Laboratoire Charles Fabry, Institut d'Optique, CNRS et Université Paris-sud, Campus Polytechnique, 91127 Palaiseau Cedex, France
² Laboratoire de Photonique et de Nanostructures, CNRS, 91460 Marcoussis, France

Corresponding author: ^a sebastien.gleyzes@institutoptique.fr

Received: 7 January 2009
Revised: 13 February 2009
Published online: 19 March 2009

Abstract

We study a Fabry-Perot cavity formed from a ridge waveguide on a AlGaAs substrate. We experimentally determined the propagation losses in the waveguide at 780 nm, the wavelength of Rb atoms. We have also made a numerical and analytical estimate of the losses induced by the presence of the gap which would allow the interaction of cold atoms with the cavity field. We found that the intrinsic finesse of the gapped cavity can be on the order of F∼30, which, when one takes into account the losses due to mirror transmission, corresponds to a cooperativity parameter for our system C∼1.