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arXiv:1311.4957 · New Journal of Physics

Single photon production by rephased amplified spontaneous emission

R N Stevenson, Michael Hush, Andre R. R. Carvalho, Sarah E. Beavan, Matthew J. Sellars, J. J. Hope

Published Mar 31, 2014• 13 citations
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Abstract

The production of single photons using rephased amplified spontaneous emission is examined. This process produces single photons on demand with high efficiency by detecting the spontaneous emission from an atomic ensemble, then applying a population-inverting pulse to rephase the ensemble and produce a photon echo of the spontaneous emission events. The theoretical limits on the efficiency of the production are determined for several variants of the scheme. For an ensemble of uniform optical density, generating the initial spontaneous emission and its echo using transitions of different strengths is shown to produce single photons at 70% efficiency, limited by reabsorption. Tailoring the spatial and spectral density of the atomic ensemble is then shown to prevent reabsorption of the rephased photon, resulting in emission efficiency near unity.

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/16/3/033042

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The production of single photons using rephased amplified spontaneous emission is examined. This process produces single photons on demand with high efficiency by detecting the spontaneous emission from an atomic ensemble, then applying a population-inverting pulse to rephase the ensemble and produce a photon echo of the spontaneous emission events. The theoretical limits on the efficiency of the production are determined for several variants of the scheme. For an ensemble of uniform optical density, generating the initial spontaneous emission and its echo using transitions of different strengths is shown to produce single photons at 70% efficiency, limited by reabsorption. Tailoring the spatial and spectral density of the atomic ensemble is then shown to prevent reabsorption of the rephased photon, resulting in emission efficiency near unity.
This thesis explores the concept of photon-echo-rephasing of the spontaneous emission from an ensemble of atoms. This generates entangled photon pairs, with intermediate storage and on-demand recall of one photon of the pair. In the first instance, this has applications as a single photon source. A more advanced application is as a building-block of a quantum repeater protocol, which is essential for expanding the range and versatility of current quantum communication links. The system used for this experimental demonstration of rephased amplified spontaneous emission (RASE) is a rare-earth ion doped crystal; Pr:YSO. Rare earth ion crystals are promising candidates for practical quantum information processing devices, largely because they possess long coherence times on both optical and hyperfine transitions. To achieve the rephasing, a novel pulse sequence utilizing four atomic levels is developed and characterized. This pulse sequence allows for the single-photon signals to be resolved spatially, spectrally, and temporally from any background coherent emission associated with the bright driving fields. It is seen that spontaneous emission can indeed be rephased using this sequence, however the degree of correlation measured was not sufficient to prove a non-classical correlation. This is attributed to an insufficient signal to noise ratio. The sources of background noise are identified, and strategies proposed to enable improved correlation measurements in future RASE experiments. The most significant noise contribution is spontaneous emission that differs only slightly in frequency from the signal. Single-photon counters are used for the RASE detection; appropriate for discrete-variable quantum repeater applications, but lacking any frequency resolution. Therefore auxiliary frequency filtering is required. Narrow-band (~kHz) filtering is performed in the RASE experiment using spectral hole-burning properties of the Pr:YSO sample itself. Furthermore, a concept for a dynamic filter is developed and tested. This uses a combination of hole-burning and Stark-shifting. The demonstration involves switching between two MHz-wide transmission windows, 10.2 MHz apart. Each spectral region is switched from an absorption of ~0.5 dB to 60 dB in a matter of micro-seconds. This technique will be particularly useful in future RASE experiments for tunable frequency discrimination. An additional noise source that is found to fundamentally limit the fidelity of RASE in this system is due to uncorrelated spontaneous emission at the same frequency as the RASE signal. This emission is a direct consequence of the low branching ratio of the optical transition. A means of avoiding this emission is proposed; namely to place the sample in a cavity to effectively enhance the branching ratio. Aside from the quality of the photon correlations, another important aspect of RASE is the storage time. Methods are discussed for achieving long memory times (~1 s) in the Pr:YSO system, using transitions between ground state hyperfine levels. In general this thesis presents a series of experiments that lay the foundation for generating entanglement between photonic and collective-atomic states, through the measurement and rephasing of spontaneous emission from an ensemble of atoms.
In a solid-state ensemble of rare-earth ions, we have experimentally generated a photon-echo of a spontaneous emission event, a process referred to as rephased amplified spontaneous emission (RASE). An enabling step for this demonstration was to use a double-Λ energy level structure for the photon-echo, rather than a standard two-pulse/two-level photon echo sequence, such that the single-photon echo is spectrally and spatially distinguishable from the coherent emission that follows imperfect π-pulses.
The quantum resources of entanglement and single photons are key to a range of quantum applications. These resources are challenging to produce cleanly and efficiently. This thesis investigates and improves methods of producing entanglement and single photons using measurement and control. To robustly produce entanglement, this thesis extends work by Carvalho et al., who developed a method for creating an entangled state of two atoms. This is done by coupling the atoms to a damped cavity, and using measurement of the output of the cavity to trigger a feedback pulse on the atoms. The robustness of this scheme against imperfect localisation of the two atoms is tested in this thesis, and limits are placed on the size of a trap that will still allow an entangled state to be produced. Additionally, using three-level (Lambda configuration) atoms slows the rate at which the system evolves, allowing more time for measurement and feedback to be applied, though it does not counteract the influence of spontaneous emission. In extending this work to multiple atoms we found that the system rapidly becomes more complex, and we developed a strategy for choosing a feedback pulse that stabilises a specific, highly entangled steady state of multiple particles. In addition to this general strategy, we developed a local and separable feedback for generating entanglement in a four-partite system. This thesis also investigates the production of single photons through the rephased amplified spontaneous emission (RASE) protocol. This protocol offers the promise of a stream of precisely shaped single photons, though it is plagued by efficiency issues. We develop a model of RASE and show that it overcomes the trade-off between efficiency and photon spacing by using different optical depths for the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) preparation of the ensemble, and the RASE emission of single photons. By tailoring the density profile of the ensemble to mode-match the RASE emission of a single photon, we also able to eliminate reabsorption of the emitted photon, which would otherwise have limited the efficiency to 70%.
We present a fully quantum mechanical treatment of optically rephased photon echoes. These echoes exhibit noise due to amplified spontaneous emission; however, this noise can be seen as a consequence of the entanglement between the atoms and the output light. With a rephasing pulse one can get an ``echo'' of the amplified spontaneous emission, leading to light with nonclassical correlations at points separated in time, which is of interest in the context of building wide bandwith quantum repeaters. We also suggest a wideband version of DLCZ protocol based on the same ideas.
In applications like quantum cryptography and quantum computation, it is desirable to obtain single photon sources which can produce a train of single photons on demand at a high repetition rate, especially at or near room temperature. Such single-photon sources can be realized by tailoring the photonic environment of the quantum emitter. The photonic environment determines the local density of states, into which the photon can be emitted. A number of structures such as interfaces, cavities and waveguides have already been used to modify the spontaneous emission (SE) rate; nevertheless there is still room for improving the overall efficiency of the single-photon sources, e.g., by inventing new ways of enhancing light-matter interaction.
In this paper we report the first demonstration of “cavity enhanced rephased amplified spontaneous emission”. The rephased amplified spontaneous emission (RASE) protocol provides an all-in-one photon-pair source and quantum memory that has applications as a quantum repeater node. Cavity enhancement of the interaction of the optical mode with the ensemble has the potential to improve the fidelity of the entanglement of the photon pairs. Using heterodyne detection, amplified emission and photon echo induced rephased amplified emission were observed from a Pr3+ doped Y2SiO5 crystal placed in a Fabry Perot cavity with a finesse of 70. Modifications to the experiment to allow non-classical correlations to be observed are discussed.