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arXiv:1508.01463

Storage and retrieval of photons under their mutual interaction in Rydberg medium

Yang, Liu, Bing He, Jin‐Hui Wu, Zhaoyang Zhang, Min Xiao

Published Aug 6, 2015• 0 citations
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Abstract

Stopping and regenerating a pair of single-photon pulses at adjacent locations in coherently prepared Rydberg atomic ensembles are significantly affected by their effective interaction mediated by Rydberg excitations, and the similar processes can differ notably from the one exhibiting the common Rydberg blockade as with the stationary propagation of multi-photon light beams in the same medium. Based on the complete dynamics, we reveal the detailed features in such processes by finding how the profiles of the involved quantum fields evolve in various situations. The findings help to determine the proper regimes for implementing photonic gates and transistors. In addition, we discuss the non-adiabatic corrections associated with quickly changing control fields, and illustrate a method that restores the photon pulses' original amplitude during their retrieval unless they are heavily damped before storage.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1508.01463

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Stopping and regenerating a pair of single-photon pulses at adjacent locations in coherently prepared Rydberg atomic ensembles are significantly affected by their effective interaction mediated by Rydberg excitations, and the similar processes can differ notably from the one exhibiting the common Rydberg blockade as with the stationary propagation of multi-photon light beams in the same medium. Based on the complete dynamics, we reveal the detailed features in such processes by finding how the profiles of the involved quantum fields evolve in various situations. The findings help to determine the proper regimes for implementing photonic gates and transistors. In addition, we discuss the non-adiabatic corrections associated with quickly changing control fields, and illustrate a method that restores the photon pulses' original amplitude during their retrieval unless they are heavily damped before storage.
Storing interacting photons in ensembles of highly excited Rydberg atoms makes it possible to realize photon-photon gates. The efficiency of stopping and retrieving pairs of single-photon pulses in any Rydberg medium is, however, significantly influenced by their mutual interaction. The corresponding dynamical process is rather complicated due to the interaction constantly changing with the relative positions of photon pulses and the associated dissipation. Applying the numerical calculations based on first principles, we reveal the detail of such a dynamical process by showing how the interacting pulses evolve in various situations. Other important issues, such as the use of nonadiabatic passage for stopping photons and the optimal way to regenerate photons, are also investigated.
Photons are very good candidates to carry quantum information due to their negligible interactions. However, photon-photon interactions are needed to process photonic quantum information. This is very useful for quantum repeater applications [1], in which the success probability of entanglement swapping can be highly increased if the Bell-state measurement is performed deterministically. In the case of photons, it requires mapping them in a non-linear medium at the single-photon level. This strong non-linearity has been demonstrated by using Rydberg atoms, which are atoms excited to states with a high principal quantum number. However, previous experiments with Rydberg atoms have been implemented with weak coherent input states of light [2, 3]. Hence, the mapping of true single photons to a medium with strong single-photon non-linearity is, so far, an outstanding goal. In this work, we have demonstrated the storage and retrieval of a paired single photon on a highly non-linear medium based on atoms excited to Rydberg levels. More recently, we have also enhanced the non-linearity of our ensemble to the single photon-level, as witnessed by the antibunching of a stored and retrieved incoming coherent field [3]. This will allow the storage of a single photon in a medium with single-photon non-linearity.
Summary form only given. Strong interaction between two single photons [1], is a long standing and important goal in quantum photonics. This would enable a new regime of nonlinear optics and unlock several applications in quantum information science, including photon-photon gates and deterministic Bell-state measurements for quantum networking. In the context of quantum networks [2], a particularly important case is to achieve strong interaction between single photons from independent photon pairs that can be stored in quantum memories. So far, most of the efforts towards nonlinear effects at the single-photon level have been realized using weak classical input light.In this contribution, we demonstrate the storage and retrieval of a paired single photon emitted by an ensemble quantum memory in a strongly nonlinear medium based on highly excited Rydberg atomic excitations [3,4]. We demonstrate that non-classical correlations between the two photons persist after the retrieval from the Rydberg ensemble. We show that our Rydberg cold atomic ensemble displays optical nonlinearity with input pulses containing few tens of photons. Our results [5], mark an important step towards deterministic photonphoton interactions, and may enable deterministic Bell-state measurement with multimode quantum memories.
All-optical switching is a technique in which a gate light pulse changes the transmission of a target light pulse without the detour via electronic signal processing. We take this to the quantum regime, where the incoming gate light pulse contains only one photon on average. The gate pulse is stored as a Rydberg excitation in an ultracold atomic gas using electromagnetically induced transparency. Rydberg blockade suppresses the transmission of the subsequent target pulse. Finally, the stored gate photon can be retrieved. A retrieved photon heralds successful storage. The corresponding postselected subensemble shows an extinction of 0.05. The single-photon switch offers many interesting perspectives ranging from quantum communication to quantum information processing.
The effect of strong interatomic interactions on an optical field stored in Rydberg states of a cold atomic gas is investigated. Due to their large dipole moments Rydberg atoms interact very strongly with each other. The strength of these interactions can be significant over length scales of several microns. An effect known as dipole blockade leads to a suppression in the number of Rydberg excitations supported in a medium of finite size. The experiments described in this thesis aim to exploit this effect to create a medium with a non-linear response which occurs at the level of single-photons. A cold atomic cloud is tightly confined such that only a few Rydberg excitations are supported. It is shown that the dipole blockade phenomenon leads to strong photon-photon interactions, resulting in the generation of quantum states of light. A microwave field is used to control the strength and range over which the interactions between the stored optical photons occur. In addition, it is shown that the propagation of the optical field through the medium is non-trivial. Preliminary evidence is presented suggesting that the slow-light group delay in the medium is dependent on the number of propagating photons.
We propose a new method to create two-photon states in a controllable way using interaction between the Rydberg atoms during the storage and retrieval of slow light. A distinctive feature of the suggested procedure is that the slow light is stored into a superposition of two atomic coherences under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). Interaction between the atoms during the storage period creates entangled pairs of atoms in a superposition state that is orthogonal to the initially stored state. Restoring the slow light from this new atomic state one can produce a two photon state with a second-order correlation function determined by the atom-atom interaction and the storage time. Therefore the measurement of the restored light allows one to probe the atom-atom coupling by optical means with a sensitivity that can be increased by extending the storage time. As a realization of this idea we consider a many-body Ramsey-type technique which involves pi/2 pulses creating a superposition of Rydberg states at the beginning and the end of the storage period. In that case the regenerated light is due to the resonance dipole-dipole interaction between the atoms in the Rydberg states.