Self-sustained hysteretic motional oscillations of a single atom pumped by a laser standing wave

Summary form only given. Self-sustained oscillations/oscillators (SSO), man-made or naturally occurring, are some of the most universal phenomena. The common feature of all SSO is the so called positive feedback, which overcomes the damping by properly controlling the energy supply (pumping) from the outside source during the cycle of oscillations. Usually, the zero steady-state point of the system is unstable, and the oscillations grow up till they reach a stable limit cycle. The common quality of the resulting SSO is their well defined amplitude (the so called classical squeezing) at the expense of undetermined phase of oscillations. All the "mechanical motion" SSO known so far, were based on macro-systems, while it would be of great importance to develop a microscopic SS-oscillator based on a single particle (atom or ion), which would enable us to control the SSO mode from classical to quantum limits. The effect proposed is based on the interaction of a standing laser wave with an atom moving in along the laser beam propagation. If the laser beam is red-shifted with respect to the resonant absorption line of the atom at rest, the moving atom will experience deaccelerating force induced by a standing wave due to combinations of Doppler shifts in counterpropagating waves; this effect is at the core of laser cooling of atoms. On the other hand, if the laser wave is blue-shifted, the atom will undergo acceleration (positive feedback) in the laser field due to the Doppler-shift, which can be used for excitation of atomic SSO.