Controlled rapid generation of single photons in an atom-cavity quantum composite

In this talk, the authors report realization of high-speed single photon generation on demand in a quantum composite of a single ⁸⁵Rb atom and a Fabry-Perot cavity mode. The key idea in our experiment is to optimize system parameters for high efficiency and repetition rate of single photon generation. For this, we employed cavity parameters for a moderate coupling regime instead of the strong coupling regime with the atom-cavity coupling, cavity decay rate and atom decay rate given as (g, K, γ)/2π = (7, 19, 3) MHz (all half widths), respectively. As a result, we could generate single photons with a high efficiency of 17% at a fast repetition rate up to 10 MHz. A figure of merit, defined as the product of the efficiency and the repetition rate, is 30 times higher than those of any previous experiments in the cavity-QED system.