Strong atom-field coupling for Bose-Einstein condensates in an optical cavity on a chip

An optical cavity enhances the interaction between atoms and light, and the rate of coherent atom-photon coupling can be made larger than all decoherence rates of the system. For single atoms, this 'strong coupling regime' of cavity quantum electrodynamics has been the subject of many experimental advances. Efforts have been made to control the coupling rate by trapping the atom and cooling it towards the motional ground state; the latter has been achieved in one dimension so far. For systems of many atoms, the three-dimensional ground state of motion is routinely achieved in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). Although experiments combining BECs and optical cavities have been reported recently, coupling BECs to cavities that are in the strong-coupling regime for single atoms has remained an elusive goal. Here we report such an experiment, made possible by combining a fibre-based cavity with atom-chip technology. This enables single-atom cavity quantum electrodynamics experiments with a simplified set-up and realizes the situation of many atoms in a cavity, each of which is identically and strongly coupled to the cavity mode. Moreover, the BEC can be positioned deterministically anywhere within the cavity and localized entirely within a single antinode of the standing-wave cavity field; we demonstrate that this gives rise to a controlled, tunable coupling rate. We study the heating rate caused by a cavity transmission measurement as a function of the coupling rate and find no measurable heating for strongly coupled BECs. The spectrum of the coupled atoms-cavity system, which we map out over a wide range of atom numbers and cavity-atom detunings, shows vacuum Rabi splittings exceeding 20 gigahertz, as well as an unpredicted additional splitting, which we attribute to the atomic hyperfine structure. We anticipate that the system will be suitable as a light-matter quantum interface for quantum information.     

Metagenomic and functional analysis of hindgut microbiota of a wood-feeding higher termite

From the standpoints of both basic research and biotechnology, there is considerable interest in reaching a clearer understanding of the diversity of biological mechanisms employed during lignocellulose degradation. Globally, termites are an extremely successful group of wood-degrading organisms and are therefore important both for their roles in carbon turnover in the environment and as potential sources of biochemical catalysts for efforts aimed at converting wood into biofuels. Only recently have data supported any direct role for the symbiotic bacteria in the gut of the termite in cellulose and xylan hydrolysis. Here we use a metagenomic analysis of the bacterial community resident in the hindgut paunch of a wood-feeding 'higher' Nasutitermes species (which do not contain cellulose-fermenting protozoa) to show the presence of a large, diverse set of bacterial genes for cellulose and xylan hydrolysis. Many of these genes were expressed in vivo or had cellulase activity in vitro, and further analyses implicate spirochete and fibrobacter species in gut lignocellulose degradation. New insights into other important symbiotic functions including H2 metabolism, CO2-reductive acetogenesis and N2 fixation are also provided by this first system-wide gene analysis of a microbial community specialized towards plant lignocellulose degradation. Our results underscore how complex even a 1-microl environment can be.