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arXiv:0901.0336 · Physical Review Letters

Efficient All-Optical Switching Using Slow Light within a Hollow Fiber

Michal Bajcsy, Sebastian Hofferberth, Vlatko Balić, Thibault Peyronel, Mohammad Hafezi, Alexander S. Zibrov, Vladan Vuletić, Mikhail D. Lukin

Published May 18, 2009• 474 citations
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Abstract

We demonstrate a fiber-optical switch that is activated at tiny energies corresponding to a few hundred optical photons per pulse. This is achieved by simultaneously confining both photons and a small laser-cooled ensemble of atoms inside the microscopic hollow core of a single-mode photonic-crystal fiber and using quantum optical techniques for generating slow light propagation and large nonlinear interaction between light beams.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.102.203902

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We demonstrate a fiber-optical switch that is activated at tiny energies corresponding to a few hundred optical photons per pulse. This is achieved by simultaneously confining both photons and a small laser-cooled ensemble of atoms inside the microscopic hollow core of a single-mode photonic-crystal fiber and using quantum optical techniques for generating slow light propagation and large nonlinear interaction between light beams.
Cold atoms confined inside a hollow-core photonic-crystal fiber with core diameters of a few photon wavelengths are a promising medium for studying nonlinear optical interactions at extremely low light levels. The high electric field intensity per photon and interaction lengths not limited by diffraction are some of the unique features of this system. Here, we present the results of our first nonlinear optics experiments in this system including a demonstration of an all-optical switch that is activated at energies corresponding to few hundred optical photons per pulse.
Our goal is to study quantum optical phenomena in a strong nonlinear optical system. For this purpose, we create a hollow-core photonic-crystal (HCPC) fiber-based platform that confines photons and atomic ensembles together. This enables strong light-matter interactions which are crucial for implementing optical nonlinearities at single-photon levels [1]. We use an optical dipole trap at cesium's magic wavelength to guide laser cooled cesium atoms into and inside the fiber core. This approach will allow us to perform experiments with the dipole trap continuously on as opposed to the previously reported fiber-loading systems [2,3] in which the dipole trap was rapidly amplitude-modulated to avoid the effect from the spatially dependent AC Stark shift. In this system, we perform experiments on electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) and demonstrate slow light and all optical switch. We also aim to observe large cross-phase modulation (XPM) using a three-level ladder scheme [4,5]. Lastly, the approaches to integrate a cavity into HCPCFs to increase light-matter interactions, thus the optical nonlinearities, will be described.