Fiber-pigtailed optical tweezer for single-atom trapping and single-photon generation

We demonstrate a miniature, fiber-coupled optical tweezer to trap a single atom. The same fiber is used to trap a single atom and to read out its fluorescence. To obtain a low background level, the tweezer light is chopped, and we measure the influence of the chopping frequency on the atom's lifetime. We use the single atom as a single-photon source at 780 nm and measure the second-order correlation function of the emitted photons. Because of its miniature, robust, fiber-pigtailed design, this tweezer can be implemented in a broad range of experiments where single atoms are used as a resource. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.