A cavity-array microscope for parallel single-atom interfacing.

Abstract

Neutral-atom arrays and optical cavity quantum electrodynamics systems have developed in parallel as central pillars of modern experimental quantum science^1-3. Although each platform has shown exceptional capabilities-such as high-fidelity quantum logic^4-7 in atom arrays and strong light-matter coupling in cavities^8-10-their combination holds promise for realizing fast and non-destructive atom measurement¹¹, building large-scale quantum networks^12-17 and engineering hybrid atom-photon Hamiltonians^18-20. However, so far, experiments integrating the two platforms have been limited to spatially interfacing the entire atom array with one global cavity mode^21-26, a configuration that constrains addressability, parallelism and scalability. Here we introduce the cavity-array microscope, an experimental platform where each individual atom is strongly coupled to its own individual cavity across a two-dimensional array of over 40 modes. Our approach requires no nanophotonic elements^26,27, and instead uses a free-space cavity geometry with intra-cavity lenses^28,29 to realize above-unity peak cooperativity with micrometre-scale mode waists and spacings, compatible with typical atom-array length scales while keeping atoms far from dielectric surfaces. We achieve homogeneous atom-cavity coupling and show fast, non-destructive, parallel readout on millisecond timescales, including through a fibre array as a proof of principle for networking applications³⁰. As an outlook, we realize a next-generation iteration of the platform with over 500 cavities and a nearly 10-fold improvement in finesse. Our work unlocks the regime of many-cavity quantum electrodynamics and opens an unexplored frontier of large-scale quantum networking with atom arrays.