We investigate the interaction between single quantum emitters and non-transversally polarized photons for which the electric field vector amplitude has a significant component in the direction of propagation. Even though this situation seems to be at odds with the description of light as a transverse wave, it regularly occurs when interfacing or manipulating emitters with non-paraxial, guided, or evanescent light. Here, we quantitatively investigate this phenomenon for the case of single atoms that strongly interact with whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) microresonators. These resonators confine light by continuous total internal reflection and offer the advantage of very long photon lifetimes in conjunction with near-lossless in- and out-coupling of light via tapered fiber couplers. In our setup, we employ a a novel type of high-Q WGM microresonator - a so-called bottle microresonator [1], see Fig. 1 - which has the additional advantage of being fully tunable and provides a mode geometry that enables near-lossless simultaneous coupling of two independent tapered fiber couplers [2].
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