The microscopically pumped maser, or micromaser is a cavity QED experiment intended to be a physical realisation of the Jaynes-Cummings model of a single two-level atom interacting with a single mode electromagnetic field. This is the simplest model that describes the interaction
between light and matter, yet it predicts behaviour unexpected from semiclassical models, such as the revival of Rabi oscillations of an atom interacting with an initially coherent field and non-monotonic linewidth as a function of pumping.
The micromaser at the University of Leeds consists of a high quality superconducting microwave cavity designed to be resonant with the transition between two specific Rydberg states of rubidium. These two states behave like an ideal two level atom, and couple strongly to the
cavity field due to a large dipole moment. These Rydberg atoms are passed through the cavity in a rarified beam such that in most instances when there is an atom in the cavity, there will only be one, closely approximating the Jaynes-Cummings model. I present experimental work on the build phase of the micromaser. Specifically I routed all of the wiring and microwave lines in the cryostat that contains the micromaser, and designed mounts for various components. I also designed several testing methods for probing high quality microwave cavity resonances and quality factors which are presented.
Using the Jaynes-Cummings model as a prototype, I demonstrate how extensions to the model can be used to construct universal quantum logic gates that operate on photonic qubits in a multi-mode cavity. This could be realised in a micromaser with a multi-mode cavity. Conversely, I demonstrate that by using atoms as qubits, detuned cavities can be used to generate entangled
resources such as the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state, the W state, and graph states of atoms. I show that single qubit rotations on Rydberg atom qubits have already been experimentally demonstrated so that in combination these entangled resources are useful for quantum metrology,
quantum computation and even tests of quantum gravity.