Abstract EN:

This thesis focuses on the study of interactions between photons guided by an optical nanofiber and arrays of trapped atoms. Our experimental setup consists in a two-color compensated dipole trap located in the evanescent field of an optical nanofiber in a ultra-high vacuum chamber. Cold cesium atoms are trapped in two 1D arrays above and below the nanofiber. An optical depth of over 130 is achieved with only a few thousand atoms. We demonstrate the ability to prepare the trapped atoms in a single Zeeman sub-level, albeit with limited efficiency. This is an important step towards the realization of a long-lived quantum memory with our fibered platform. The main result of this thesis concerns the initialization of a single collective excitation coupled to the nano-waveguide. The excitation is heralded by the detection of a Raman scattered photon in the nanofiber. We are then able to readout the atomic state and retrieve a single photon in the guided mode with an efficiency of up to 25%. This result is the first demonstration of an atomic entangled state preferentially coupled to a waveguide. It is a milestone in the context of the emerging waveguide-QED approach, with applications to quantum networking, quantum non-linear optics and quantum many-body physics.