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arXiv:1209.5449 · New Journal of Physics

Photon blockade with a four-level quantum emitter coupled to a photonic-crystal nanocavity

Michal Bajcsy, Arka Majumdar, Armand Rundquist, Jelena Vuckovic A

Published Feb 7, 2013• 53 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study the photon blockade phenomenon in a nanocavity containing a single four-level quantum emitter. By numerically simulating the second-order autocorrelation function of the intra-cavity field with realistic parameters achievable in a state-of-the-art photonic-crystal nanocavity, we show that significant photon blockade effects appear even outside the strong coupling regime. We introduce an intuitive picture of the photon blockade that explains the performance difference between the two-level and the four-level emitter schemes reported in previous works, as well as why—in contrast to a cavity containing a two-level atom—signatures of photon blockade appear and should be experimentally observable outside the strong coupling regime when a four-level emitter is used. Finally, we show that thanks to the emitter–cavity coupling achievable in a nanocavity, photon blockade can be realized despite the large frequency difference between the relevant optical transitions in realistic four-level emitters, which has so far prevented the experimental realization of this photon blockade scheme.

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/15/2/025014

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We study the photon blockade phenomenon in a nanocavity containing a single four-level quantum emitter. By numerically simulating the second-order autocorrelation function of the intra-cavity field with realistic parameters achievable in a state-of-the-art photonic-crystal nanocavity, we show that significant photon blockade effects appear even outside the strong coupling regime. We introduce an intuitive picture of the photon blockade that explains the performance difference between the two-level and the four-level emitter schemes reported in previous works, as well as why—in contrast to a cavity containing a two-level atom—signatures of photon blockade appear and should be experimentally observable outside the strong coupling regime when a four-level emitter is used. Finally, we show that thanks to the emitter–cavity coupling achievable in a nanocavity, photon blockade can be realized despite the large frequency difference between the relevant optical transitions in realistic four-level emitters, which has so far prevented the experimental realization of this photon blockade scheme.
We have achieved a conventional photon blockade and two-photon blockade in a second-order nonlinear system with a two-level atom embedded in a high-frequency cavity. The physical mechanisms behind the implementation of both types of photon blockade are explained, and analytical conditions for achieving a conventional photon blockade are derived, which are consistent with the numerical solutions of the master equation in the steady-state limit. By appropriately setting the system parameters, we can achieve simultaneous conventional photon blockade in the high-frequency cavity and two-photon blockade in the low-frequency cavity. The effects of driving factors and environmental temperature on photon blockade are analyzed. The adjustability of the coupling coefficient between the high-frequency cavity and the atom, as well as the nonlinear coupling coefficient between different nanocavities, is discussed in the context of implementing conventional photon blockades. The tunability of these coupling coefficients may significantly reduce the experimental complexity of implementing the system.
We present an all-fiber emitter-cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) scheme which makes it possible to realize the strong photon blockade phenomenon in the strong coupling regime. To begin with, we study the emitter-cavity system where the two-level emitter and cavity are driven by a laser field under different driving strengths, respectively. Then, we theoretically derive that through driving the single-mode nanofiber cavity and a single two-level emitter simultaneously with two classical fields, the photon antibunching effect and the intracavity mean photon number will be tremendously enhanced. Compared with the systems driving an emitter or the cavity, respectively, the second-order correlation function at zero time decay g(2)(0){g}^{(2)}(0)g(2)(0) in our system can reach the minimum value as 0.0003, which is much smaller than a single-emitter-cavity QED system of emitter drive or cavity drive. In particular, under the condition of quantum interference model, the strong phenomenon of photon antibunching can be flexibly reached by controlling of the intensity relationship between the dual-pumping fields in the strong coupling regime. Our proposal can be achieved in the near future and has great potential applications in high-quality single-photon sources and quantum communication processing.
The photon blockade (PB) effect in emitter-cavity systems depends on the anharmonicity of the ladder of dressed energy eigenstates. The recent developments in color center photonics are leading toward experimental demonstrations of multiemitter-cavity solid-state systems with an expanded set of energy levels compared to the traditionally studied single-emitter systems. We focus on the case of N=2N=2N=2 nonidentical quasiatoms strongly coupled to a nanocavity in the bad cavity regime (with parameters within reach of the color center systems), and discover three PB mechanisms: polaritonic, subradiant, and unconventional. The polaritonic PB, which is the conventional mechanism studied in single-emitter-cavity systems, also occurs at the polariton frequencies in multiemitter systems. The subradiant PB is a new interference effect owing to the inhomogeneous broadening of the emitters which results in a purer and a more robust single-photon emission than the polaritonic PB. The unconventional PB in the modeled system corresponds to the suppression of the single- and two-photon correlation statistics and the enhancement of the three-photon correlation statistic. Using the effective Hamiltonian approach, we unravel the origin and the time-domain evolution of these phenomena.
Analogous to Coulomb blockade for electrons, photon blockade is a key quantum optical effect in which the presence of one photon prevents the transmission of subsequent ones through a nonlinear medium. Beyond its fundamental interest, photon and multi-photon blockade are actively studied as mechanisms for generating technologically-relevant quantum states of light. Although photon blockade typically requires achieving strong light-matter coupling, increasing the number of atoms fails to enhance antibunching. Here, we analyze the optical transmission properties of a quantum resonator that embeds a two-photon-coupled ensemble of emitters, combining an approximate analytical approach with full quantum numerical simulations. We show that when light and matter are coupled via a two-photon interaction, both single- and multi-photon blockade can benefit from a collective enhancement. We propose different driving schemes in which the second or third-order correlation functions are strongly suppressed with increasing atom number. Differently from established methods, this collective enhancement of non-classical properties occurs with unitary transmission and is ultimately constrained only by decoherence. This demonstrates that collective two-photon couplings are a powerful mechanism for realizing photon blockade even in platforms where individual strong coupling is not achievable.
A two-level quantum emitter interacting with a cavity field is an important model for investigating the photon blockade (PB) effect. Most work on this topic relies on the assumption that the emitter transition frequency is resonant with the fundamental mode frequency of the cavity. In this work we relax this constraint and reexamine the PB effect in a more general emitter-cavity system with arbitrary emitter and cavity detunings from a driving field. The results show that when the signs of the emitter and cavity detunings are the same, a PB occurs only in the strong-coupling regime, but for opposite signs of the emitter and cavity detunings, strong photon antibunching is observed in both the weak- and strong-coupling regimes, and better antibunching is achieved compared with the case when the signs are the same. More interestingly, we find that this PB arises from quantum interference for both weak and strong nonlinearities. These results deepen our understanding of the underlying mechanism of PBs and may contribute to the construction of single-photon sources with higher purity and better flexibility using two-level emitter-cavity systems.
We propose an experimental scheme to implement a strong photon blockade with a single quantum dot coupled to a nanocavity. The photon blockade effect can be tremendously enhanced by driving the cavity and the quantum dot simultaneously with two classical laser fields. This enhancement of photon blockade is ascribed to the quantum interference effect to avoid two-photon excitation of the cavity field. Comparing with Jaynes-Cummings model, the second-order correlation function at zero time delay g((2))(0) in our scheme can be reduced by two orders of magnitude and the system sustains a large intracavity photon number. A red (blue) cavity-light detuning asymmetry for photon quantum statistics with bunching or antibunching characteristics is also observed. The photon blockade effect has a controllable flexibility by tuning the relative phase between the two pumping laser fields and the Rabi coupling strength between the quantum dot and the pumping field. Moreover, the photon blockade scheme based on quantum interference mechanism does not require a strong coupling strength between the cavity and the quantum dot, even with the pure dephasing of the system. This simple proposal provides an effective way for potential applications in solid state quantum computation and quantum information processing.