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arXiv:1402.5800 · Physical Review A

Generation of an exponentially rising single-photon field from parametric conversion in atoms

Gurpreet Kaur Gulati, Bharath Srivathsan, Brenda Chng, Alessandro Ceré, Dzmitry Matsukevich, Christian Kurtsiefer

Published Sep 11, 2014• 42 citations
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Abstract

We prepare heralded single photons from a photon pair source based on nondegenerate four-wave mixing in a cold atomic ensemble via a cascade decay scheme. Their statistics shows strong antibunching with a value for the second order correlation at zero delay less than 0.03, indicating a near single photon character. In an optical homodyne experiment, we directly measure the temporal envelope of these photons and find, depending on the heralding scheme, an exponentially decaying or rising profile. Such a rising envelope is required for the efficient interaction between a single photon and a two level system. At the same time, their observation illustrates the breakdown of a realistic interpretation of the heralding process in terms of defining an initial condition of a physical system.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.90.033819

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We prepare heralded single photons from a photon pair source based on nondegenerate four-wave mixing in a cold atomic ensemble via a cascade decay scheme. Their statistics shows strong antibunching with a value for the second order correlation at zero delay less than 0.03, indicating a near single photon character. In an optical homodyne experiment, we directly measure the temporal envelope of these photons and find, depending on the heralding scheme, an exponentially decaying or rising profile. Such a rising envelope is required for the efficient interaction between a single photon and a two level system. At the same time, their observation illustrates the breakdown of a realistic interpretation of the heralding process in terms of defining an initial condition of a physical system.
We prepare single photons with a temporal envelope with rising exponential shape, resembling the time-reversed version of photons from the spontaneous decay process using a parametric conversion process in a cold atomic vapor. The mechanism is based on correlated photon pair preparation and heralding of one photon by the other one after engineering the temporal envelope of the herald.1 Such a temporal single photon profile is ideal for absorption by a two level system.2, 3 We demonstrate this in an experiment showcasing the absorption by a single Rubidium atom.4
Summary form only given. Is an atom more likely to scatter a photon with an exponentially rising or decaying temporal profile? We try to answer this question experimentally and investigate the scattering of heralded photons from a single atom in free-space. We use a single Rubidium atom trapped in optical tweezers and prepared in the groundstate of a cyclic dipole transition as a textbook-like two-level system. A time-ordered photon pair source, in conjunction with an asymmetric cavity, generates heralded single photons with an exponentially decaying or rising temporal profile. The heralded photons are resonant with the atomic transition and have a bandwidth comparable to the atomic linewidth. The photons are strongly focused onto the atom by a large numerical aperture lens. We study the scattering dynamics by measuring the atomic emission and the reduction in the number of transmitted photons. We perform the scattering experiment for photons with exponentially decaying and rising temporal envelopes and find that the atomic dynamics depend on the temporal profile of the photon. The atomic absorption is shorter but has a higher maximum for the rising photon than for the the decaying one. Interestingly, the overall probability that the photon is scattered by the atom is similar for decaying and rising photons.
We demonstrate a way to prepare single photons with a temporal envelope that resembles the time reversal of photons from the spontaneous decay process. We use the photon pairs generated from a time-ordered cascade decay: the detection of the first photon of the cascade is used as a herald for the ground-state transition resonant second photon. We show how the interaction of the heralding photon with an asymmetric Fabry-Perot cavity reverses the temporal shape of its twin photon from a decaying to a rising exponential envelope. This single photon is expected to be ideal for interacting with two-level systems.
We characterize a source of photon pairs based on cascade decay in a cold 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb ensemble. This source is particularly suited to generate photons for interaction with 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb based atomic systems. We experimentally investigate the dependence of pair generation rate, single photon heralding efficiency, and bandwidth as a function of the number of atoms, detuning, and intensity of the pump beams. The observed power and detuning behaviors can be explained by the steady-state solution of an established three-level model of an atom. Measurements presented here provide a useful insight on the optimization of this kind of photon-pair source.
The light wave propagating in a dispersive medium can be formularized as electromagnetic (EM) fields or quantized as a pair of Hermitian operators. The fascinating optical phenomena display classical and nonclassical properties, depending on whether they can be described by the classical EM field theory. A cold atomic ensemble with neligible inhomogenous Doppler broadening is ideal to explore the interaction between light and matter. A typical problem in classical pulse propagation is optical transients, which induced by rapid response of dispersive medium to the sudden change of the driving radiation fields. With cold atoms confined in the two-dimensional magneto-optical trap, whose optical depth is controllable in our system, optical precursor and free-induction decay both classified as optical transients are observed in a single experiment with different conditions. Moreover, the information velocity limit is verified in superluminal medium, with the observation and analysis of precursors. Characterized with narrow linewidth and long coherence time, paired photons generated from cold atomic ensemble in four-wave mixing process possess irreplaceable advantage in quantum optics area. Temporal modulation of narrow-band paired photons can be achieved by directly modulating the generated photons or by modulating the classical control fields. After successfully reshaping the temporal waveform of the paired photons, heralded single photon source is well prepared for studying the propagation of nonclassical single photon in dispersive medium. The speed limit imposed by Einstein Causality principle is firstly experimentally verified on single photon level.
Generation of frequency-correlated narrowband biphotons from the four-wave mixing process is theoretically analyzed through manipulating optical properties of light propagation inside a cold atomic ensemble. In contrast with the spontaneous parametric down-conversion case, we find a much looser condition, which allows producing such frequency-correlated paired photons. We propose a two-photon temporal conditional correlation measurement to detect these photons. In addition, our results provide other evidence for observing backward pulse propagation from the viewpoint of two-photon correlation measurement.