Cavity quantum electrodynamics

This paper reviews the work on cavity quantum electrodynamics of free atoms. In recent years, cavity experiments have also been conducted on a variety of solid-state systems resulting in many interesting applications, of which microlasers, photon bandgap structures and quantum dot structures in cavities are outstanding examples. Although these phenomena and systems are very interesting, discussion is limited here to free atoms and mostly single atoms because these systems exhibit clean quantum phenomena and are not disturbed by a variety of other effects. At the centre of our review is the work on the one-atom maser, but we also give a survey of the entire field, using free atoms in order to show the large variety of problems dealt with. The cavity interaction can be separated into two main regimes: the weak coupling in cavity or cavity-like structures with low quality factors Q and the strong coupling when high-Q cavities are involved. The weak coupling leads to modification of spontaneous transitions and level shifts, whereas the strong coupling enables one to observe a periodic exchange of photons between atoms and the radiation field. In this case, atoms and photons are entangled, this being the basis for a variety of phenomena observed, some of them leading to interesting applications in quantum information processing. The cavity experiments with free atoms reached a new domain with the advent of experiments in the visible spectral region. A review on recent achievements in this area is also given.