Optical cavities have long been a cornerstone technology in cavity quantum electrodynamics, enabling exploration of a wide range of phenomena in strong interaction between light and matter. On the other hand, reconfigurable atom arrays have recently emerged as a powerful platform for quantum computation and simulation, but realizing their full potential requires engineering efficient coupling to single photons. 

We are taking a novel approach to strongly coupling single atoms in arrays to optical cavities. While most free space cavity QED experiments achieve a high cooperativity by increasing the finesse, our approach is to make with wavelength scale mode size low to moderate finesse cavities by putting aspheres inside. Furthermore, by incorporating a microlens array, we can realize an array of cavities and overlap it with our array of atoms, giving every atom its own cavity to emit into. In the short-term, we plan to leverage this strong coupling to speed up atomic state detection for quantum error correction in a general purpose quantum computer. We are also interested in exploring the potential for this platform in quantum networking. The telecom transition in Ytterbium will be particularly useful for the latter. The clock transition in Ytterbium will also open new possibilities for metrology

This platform will also allow for local engineering of dissipation to realize interesting non-hermitian hamiltonians. The different cavities in the array can be coupled to each other using intra-cavity elements like acousto-optic modulators, or through auxiliary cavities, allowing realization of models with nearest neighbour and even more exotic tunneling geometries.