Cavities with Non-Spherical Mirrors for Enhanced Quantum Emitter-Cavity Photon Interaction

Abstract: We propose a procedure for the significant enhancement of the strong coupling rate between photons in an optical cavity and a single quantum emitter, such as an atom, quantum dot or trapped ion. We show that specially designed, non-spherical mirrors can lead to cavity eigenmodes that exhibit a large field enhancement at the center of the cavity while inducing significantly less beam divergence, and therefore smaller round trip losses and higher cooperativity, than can be achieved by operating a spherical-mirror cavity in the near-concentric regime. We verify our designs using mode matching theory and discuss their robustness relative to different kinds of manufacturing deviations.