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arXiv:0907.5206 · Europhysics Letters (EPL)

Photonic quantum transport in a nonlinear optical fiber

Mohammad Hafezi, Darrick E. Chang, Vladimir Gritsev, Eugene Demler, Mikhail D. Lukin

Published May 27, 2011• 26 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We theoretically study the transmission of few-photon quantum fields through a strongly nonlinear optical medium. We develop a general approach to investigate nonequilibrium quantum transport of bosonic fields through a finite-size nonlinear medium and apply it to a recently demonstrated experimental system where cold atoms are loaded in a hollow-core optical fiber. We show that when the interaction between photons is effectively repulsive, the system acts as a single-photon switch. In the case of attractive interaction, the system can exhibit either antibunching or bunching, associated with the resonant excitation of bound states of photons by the input field. These effects can be observed by probing statistics of photons transmitted through the nonlinear fiber.

DOI
10.1209/0295-5075/94/54006

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We theoretically study the transmission of few-photon quantum fields through a strongly nonlinear optical medium. We develop a general approach to investigate nonequilibrium quantum transport of bosonic fields through a finite-size nonlinear medium and apply it to a recently demonstrated experimental system where cold atoms are loaded in a hollow-core optical fiber. We show that when the interaction between photons is effectively repulsive, the system acts as a single-photon switch. In the case of attractive interaction, the system can exhibit either antibunching or bunching, associated with the resonant excitation of bound states of photons by the input field. These effects can be observed by probing statistics of photons transmitted through the nonlinear fiber.
We present a theoretical technique for solving the quantum transport problem of a few photons through a one-dimensional, strongly nonlinear waveguide. We specifically consider the situation where the evolution of the optical field is governed by the quantum nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation. Although this kind of nonlinearity is quite general, we focus on a realistic implementation involving cold atoms loaded in a hollow-core optical fiber, where the atomic system provides a tunable nonlinearity that can be large even at a single-photon level. In particular, we show that when the interaction between photons is effectively repulsive, the transmission of multiphoton components of the field is suppressed. This leads to antibunching of the transmitted light and indicates that the system acts as a single-photon switch. On the other hand, in the case of attractive interaction, the system can exhibit either antibunching or bunching, which is in stark contrast to semiclassical calculations. We show that the bunching behavior is related to the resonant excitation of bound states of photons inside the system.
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.
We demonstrate theoretically that photon-photon attraction can be engineered in the continuum of scattering states for pairs of photons propagating in a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber filled with cold atoms. The atoms are regularly spaced in an optical lattice configuration and the photons are resonantly tuned to an internal atomic transition. We show that the hard-core repulsion resulting from saturation of the atomic transitions induces bunching in the photonic component of the collective atom-photon modes (polaritons). Bunching is obtained in a frequency range as large as tens of GHz, and can be controlled by the inter-atomic separation. We provide a fully analytical explanation for this phenomenon by proving that correlations result from a mismatch of the quantization volumes for atomic excitations and photons in the continuum. Even stronger correlations can be observed for in-gap two-polariton bound states. Our theoretical results use parameters relevant for current experiments and suggest a simple and feasible way to induce interactions between photons.
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.
Cold atoms confined inside a hollow core photonic crystal fiber with core diameter 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, large optical depths, and interaction lengths not limited by diffraction are some of the unique features of this system. We describe recent progress in our experiment that uses a combination of magnetic trapping and a red-detuned optical dipole trap to transfer cold rubidium atoms into the hollow-core fiber. We present data on transfer efficiencies as well as preliminary experiments towards nonlinear optics with few photon pulses.