Large ion Coulomb crystals: A near-ideal medium for coupling optical cavity modes to matter

We present an investigation of the coherent coupling of various transverse field modes of an optical cavity to ion Coulomb crystals. The obtained experimental results, which include the demonstration of identical collective coupling rates for different transverse modes of a cavity field to ions in the same large Coulomb crystal, are in excellent agreement with theoretical predictions. The results furthermore suggest that Coulomb crystals in the future may serve as near-ideal media for high-fidelity multimode quantum information processing and communication purposes, including the generation and storage of single-photon qubits encoded in different transverse modes.