Coherent coupling of a single Ca/sup +/ ion to a high finesse optical cavity field

Two experiments are performed to investigate the coherent interaction of a single Ca/sup +/ ion and a cavity field: first, Rabi oscillations are excited with short resonant laser pulses injected into the cavity, and second, change of the spontaneous emission rate are measured from the metastable D/sub 5/2 /level due to the cavity-enhanced vacuum field.