The understanding of the interaction of light with ensembles of atoms is a hard, quantum many-body problem. However understanding this problem is vital to describe many phenomena where matter made of many individual emitters interacts with light. In addition, it might have a significant impact for quantum technologies. Indeed, novel quantum simulators based on atomic arrays have been developed, based on atomic arrays trapped in optical tweezer. Understanding how these arrays collectively interact with light is an interesting challenge, and might unlock new applications for these simulators.
The goal of the CORSAIR project is to develop a dedicated experiment to understand the collective interaction of an atomic array with light. For this, one needs an apparatus able to prepare arrays of atoms, to control their interaction with light, and to measure how the interaction with light modifies the array. In particular, when the array is impinged on by light, this light induces interactions between the atoms, which modify the state of the array, and induces a collective response that differs drastically to the response of an individual atom. Within the CORSAIR project, we will fully control the light-matter interaction of the individual atoms with light. Furthermore we will setup new methods to probe in-situ how light-induced interactions modify the atomic state, which is key to understand their collective response to light. Once these tools are in place, we will perform dedicated experiments, in the regime where the distance between the atoms is shorter than the wavelength of the light, which is where strong effects are expected. We will perform experiments on spectroscopy and collective spontaneous emission. Understanding these effects is crucial for metrology (precise measurements) in atomic physics, or to leverage collective effects in quantum simulators.
