Controlled single-photon emission from a single trapped two-level atom

Science. 2005 Jul 15;309(5733):454-6. doi: 10.1126/science.1113394.

Abstract

By illuminating an individual rubidium atom stored in a tight optical tweezer with short resonant light pulses, we created an efficient triggered source of single photons with a well-defined polarization. The measured intensity correlation of the emitted light pulses exhibits almost perfect antibunching. Such a source of high-rate, fully controlled single-photon pulses has many potential applications for quantum information processing.