Trapped atoms and superradiance on an integrated nanophotonic microring circuit

Interfacing cold atoms with integrated nanophotonic devices could offer new paradigms for engineering atom-light interactions and provide a potentially scalable route for quantum sensing, metrology, and quantum information processing. In this talk, we discuss our recent experiment demonstrating the first direct loading of an ensemble of atoms into an optical microtrap above a nanophotonic microring resonator. Efficient trap loading is achieved via a degenerate Raman-sideband cooling (dRSC) scheme, using built-in spin-motion Raman coupling in the microtrap and a single optical pumping beam sent from free space. We show that these dRSC-cooled atoms display large cooperative coupling and enhanced superradiant decay into a whispering-gallery mode in the microring resonator. Our technique can be extended to trapping a large ensemble of cold atoms on nanophotonic circuits for a broad range of quantum applications.