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arXiv:1705.04472 · Physical Review Letters

Nonclassical Light from Large Ensembles of Trapped Ions

Petr Obšil, Lukáš Lachman, T. Pham, Adam Lešundák, Václav Hucl, Martin Čížek, Jan Hrabina, Ondřej Čı́p, L. Slodička, Radim Filip

Published Jun 20, 2018• 22 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The vast majority of physical objects we are dealing with are almost exclusively made of atoms. Because of their discrete level structure, single atoms have proved to be emitters of light, which is incompatible with the classical description of electromagnetic waves. We demonstrate this incompatibility for atomic fluorescence when scaling up the size of the source ensemble, which consists of trapped atomic ions, by several orders of magnitude. The presented measurements of nonclassical statistics on light unconditionally emitted from ensembles containing up to more than a thousand ions promise further scalability to much larger emitter numbers. The methodology can be applied to a broad range of experimental platforms focusing on the bare nonclassical character of single isolated emitters.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.120.253602

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The vast majority of physical objects we are dealing with are almost exclusively made of atoms. Because of their discrete level structure, single atoms have proved to be emitters of light, which is incompatible with the classical description of electromagnetic waves. We demonstrate this incompatibility for atomic fluorescence when scaling up the size of the source ensemble, which consists of trapped atomic ions, by several orders of magnitude. The presented measurements of nonclassical statistics on light unconditionally emitted from ensembles containing up to more than a thousand ions promise further scalability to much larger emitter numbers. The methodology can be applied to a broad range of experimental platforms focusing on the bare nonclassical character of single isolated emitters.
Nonclassical quantum effects gradually reach domains of physics of large systems previously considered as purely classical. We derive a hierarchy of operational criteria suitable for a reliable detection of nonclassicality of light from an arbitrarily large ensemble of independent single-photon emitters. We show, that such large ensemble can always emit nonclassical light without any phase reference and under realistic experimental conditions including incoherent background noise. The nonclassical light from the large ensemble of the emitters can be witnessed much better than light coming from a single or a few emitters.
The optical interference constitutes a paramount resource in modern physics. At the scale of individual atoms and photons, it is a diverse concept that causes different coherent phenomena. We present the experimental characterization of both coherent and statistical properties of light emitted from ensembles of trapped ions increasing with a number of contributing phase-incoherent independent atomic particles ranging from a single to up to several hundreds. It conclusively demonstrates how super-Poissonian quantum statistics non-trivially arises purely from the finite number of indistinguishable single-photon emitters in the limit of a single detection mode. The achieved new optical emission regime in which these independent atoms contribute coherently to the super-Poissonian statistics provides a new perspective on the emergence of optical coherence at the atomic scale and constitutes a unique toolbox for its generation and control at the most microscopic level.
A great deal of research in optics concentrates on developing quantum methods ranging from precision measurement to optical telecommunication, and from quantum information processing to fundamental tests of nature. To this aim, engineering and characterization of quantum states of light becomes extremally important. Nonclassical sources are based on various underlying physical phenomena, from parametric downconversion and four-wave mixing to solid state and atomic single emitters to ensembles of atoms or ions. I will discuss recent efforts in engineering and characterization of nonclassical light states applicable to a broad range of sources, predominantly based on tunable narrow-band filtering.
Quantum non-Gaussianity (QNG) corresponds to an essential resource in many prospective applications of quantum technologies. QNG states of light have been demonstrated in a broad range of experimental platforms with various complementary advantages [1]. However, in order to allow for their direct and efficient utilization for interaction with the target quantum system, their degrees of freedom have to be well-defined and controllable. This imposes a requirement on the generation of QNG light in a single optical mode. While the intrinsic single-photon sources including trapped ions, atoms, or molecules, naturally offer a close-to a single mode emission, their technologically more accessible counterparts including majority of the solid-state emitters and sources based on heralded generation of nonclassical states in various parametric nonlinear processes typically provide a multi-mode output. Although several demonstrations of a single-mode operation of nonclassical light sources based on these platforms have been recently demonstrated, an unambiguous observation of a single-mode QNG light has never been presented.
Photon indistinguishability constitutes an essential resource in modern physics. At the scale of individual atoms and photons, it is a diverse concept that causes different coherent phenomena. We present the experimental characterization of indistinguishable photons detected in a single mode from a finite and stable ensemble of single-photon emitters: trapped ions. We conclusively observe an increase of second-order correlation and super-Poissonian statistics of these photons with a number of contributing phase-incoherent independent emissions from the atoms, ranging from a single to up to several hundred. This optical emission regime provides insight into the emergence of super-Poissonian light at the atomic scale by photon indistinguishability. It constitutes a unique toolbox for its generation and control at the most microscopic level.
Single atoms or atom-like emitters are the purest source of single photons, they are intrinsically incapable of multi-photon emission. To demonstrate this degree of photon number-state purity we have realized a single-photon source using a single ion trapped at the common focus of high numerical aperture lenses. Our trapped-ion source produces single-photon pulses with without any background subtraction. After subtracting detector dark counts the residual is less than 3 × 10 −4 (95% confidence interval). The multi-photon component of the source light field is low enough that we measure violation of a quantum non-Gaussian state witness, by this characterization the source output is indistinguishable from ideal attenuated single photons. In combination with efforts to enhance collection efficiency from single emitters, our results suggest that single trapped ions are not only ideal stationary qubits for quantum information processing, but promising sources of light for scalable optical quantum networks.