| The new field of quantum information science has exploded into virtually every area of modern physics because of the promise it holds for understanding physical limits to communication, computation and more generally the processing of information. Remarkably, this has come concomitantly with stunning successes at integrating laser cooling and trapping techniques with high finesse microresonators. A regime where some of the new theoretical ideas may be experimentally tested in the particular setting of cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) has now been reached.; This thesis contains three inter-related parts. First, work with microspheres as a possible next generation microcavity is presented, including both successful attempts to push the limits of their quality factors in the near infrared and first experimental results at atomic interaction with the mode of the sphere at the one-photon level. The unique properties of these resonators led to some theoretical investigations of the atom-field interaction emphasizing the quantization of the atomic center of mass degrees of freedom. This has been largely unexplored both theoretically and experimentally to this point, yet remains an extremely important aspect of most serious implementations of quantum information processing in the setting of optical cavity QED. Finally, the emphasis of the last part of this thesis is on an attempt at intracavity atomic localization in the laboratory. Results to date include the first ever trapping of single atoms inside a high finesse microresonator. The techniques and capabilities developed en route to this achievement should form the experimental backbone for future work in optical cavity QED. |
