Atom in action
Figure 3. The reconstructed trajectory of a single atom measured in the Caltech experiment. The small cavity and the correspondingly large atomcavity coupling leads to a regular trajectory (green). The atom, which has been dropped into the cavity from above, rapidly orbits the high-intensity region (red) at the centre of an antinode in a plane perpendicular to the cavity axis. The period of the motion is about 150 µs and the atom stays in the cavity for about a millisecond. (Picture credit: Caltech Quantum Optics)