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arXiv:1806.07094 · Physical Review Letters

Deterministic Free-Space Source of Single Photons Using Rydberg Atoms

David Petrosyan, Klaus Mølmer

Published Sep 20, 2018• 33 citations
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Abstract

We propose an efficient free-space scheme to create single photons in a well-defined spatiotemporal mode. To that end, we first prepare a single source atom in an excited Rydberg state. The source atom interacts with a large ensemble of ground-state atoms via a laser-mediated dipole-dipole exchange interaction. Using an adiabatic passage with a chirped laser pulse, we produce a spatially extended spin wave of a single Rydberg excitation in the ensemble, accompanied by the transition of the source atom to another Rydberg state. The collective atomic excitation can then be converted to a propagating optical photon via a coherent coupling field. In contrast to previous approaches, our single-photon source does not rely on the strong coupling of a single emitter to a resonant cavity, nor does it require the heralding of collective excitation or complete Rydberg blockade of multiple excitations in the atomic ensemble.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.121.123605

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Physical Review A•Jan 16, 2024•4 citations
We propose an efficient free-space scheme to create single photons in a well-defined spatiotemporal mode. To that end, we first prepare a single source atom in an excited Rydberg state. The source atom interacts with a large ensemble of ground-state atoms via a laser-mediated dipole-dipole exchange interaction. Using an adiabatic passage with a chirped laser pulse, we produce a spatially extended spin wave of a single Rydberg excitation in the ensemble, accompanied by the transition of the source atom to another Rydberg state. The collective atomic excitation can then be converted to a propagating optical photon via a coherent coupling field. In contrast to previous approaches, our single-photon source does not rely on the strong coupling of a single emitter to a resonant cavity, nor does it require the heralding of collective excitation or complete Rydberg blockade of multiple excitations in the atomic ensemble.
We propose to use adiabatic rapid passage with a chirped laser pulse in the strong dipole blockade regime to deterministically excite only one Rydberg atom from randomly loaded optical dipole traps or optical lattices. The chirped laser excitation is shown to be insensitive to the random number NNN of the atoms in the traps. Our method overcomes the problem of the N\sqrt{N}N​ dependence of the collective Rabi frequency, which was the main obstacle for deterministic single-atom excitation in the ensembles with unknown NNN, and can be applied for single-atom loading of dipole traps and optical lattices.
Single photons coupled to atomic systems have shown to be a promising platform for developing quantum technologies. Yet a bright on-demand, highly pure, and highly indistinguishable single-photon source compatible with atomic platforms is lacking. In this work, we demonstrate such a source based on a strongly interacting Rydberg system. The large optical nonlinearities in a blockaded Rydberg ensemble convert coherent light into a single collective excitation that can be coherently retrieved as a quantum field. We simultaneously observe a fully single-mode (spectral, temporal, spatial, and polarization) efficiency up to 0.098(2), a detector-background-subtracted g ( 2 ) = 5.0 ( 1.6 ) × 10 − 4 , and indistinguishability of 0.980(7), at an average photon production rate of 1.18 ( 2 ) × 10 4 s − 1 . All of these make this system promising for scalable quantum information applications. Furthermore, we investigate the effects of contaminant Rydberg excitations on the source efficiency and observed single-mode efficiencies up to 0.18(2) for lower photon rates. Finally, recognizing that many quantum information protocols require a single photon in a fully single mode, we introduce metrics that take into account all degrees of freedom to benchmark the performance of on-demand sources.
In an atomic ensemble, quantum information is typically carried as single collective excitations. It is very advantageous if the creation of single excitations is efficient and robust. A Rydberg blockade enables deterministic creation of single excitations via a collective Rabi oscillation by precisely controlling the pulse area, being sensitive to many experimental parameters. In this paper, we implement the adiabatic rapid passage technique to the Rydberg excitation process in a mesoscopic atomic ensemble. We make use of a two-photon excitation scheme with an intermediate state off-resonant and sweep the laser frequency of one excitation laser. We find the chirped scheme preserves internal phases of the collective Rydberg excitation and is more robust against variance of laser intensity and frequency detuning.
The realization of a Jaynes-Cummings model in the optical domain is proposed for an atomic ensemble. The scheme exploits the collective coupling of the atoms to a quantized cavity mode and the nonlinearity introduced by coupling to high-lying Rydberg states. A two-photon transition resonantly couples the single-atom ground state $|g\ensuremath{\rangle}$ to a Rydberg state $|e\ensuremath{\rangle}$ via a nonresonant intermediate state $|i\ensuremath{\rangle}$, but due to the interaction between Rydberg atoms only a single atom can be resonantly excited in the ensemble. This restricts the state space of the ensemble to the collective ground state $|G\ensuremath{\rangle}$ and the collectively excited state $|E\ensuremath{\rangle}$ with a single Rydberg excitation distributed evenly on all atoms. The collectively enhanced coupling of all atoms to the cavity field with coherent coupling strengths which are much larger than the decay rates in the system leads to the strong coupling regime of the resulting effective Jaynes-Cummings model. We use numerical simulations to show that the cavity transmission can be used to reveal detailed properties of the Jaynes-Cummings ladder of excited states and that the atomic nonlinearity gives rise to highly nontrivial photon emission from the cavity. Finally, we suggest that the absence of interactions between remote Rydberg atoms may, due to a combinatorial effect, induce a cavity-assisted excitation blockade whose range is larger than the typical Rydberg dipole-dipole interaction length.
Abstract Quantum optics based on highly excited atoms, also known as Rydberg atoms, has cemented itself as a powerful platform for the manipulation of light at the few-photon level. The Rydberg blockade, resulting from the strong interaction between individual Rydberg atoms, can turn a large ensemble of atoms into a system which collectively resembles a single two-level emitter, a so-called Rydberg superatom. The coupling of this artificial emitter to a driving photonic mode is collectively enhanced by Rydberg interactions, enabling strong coherent coupling at the few-photon level in free-space. The exquisite level of control achievable through this has already demonstrated its utility in applications of quantum computing and information processing. Here, we review the derivation of the collective coupling between a Rydberg superatom and a single light mode and discuss the similarity of this free-space setup to waveguide quantum electrodynamics systems of quantum emitters coupled to photonic waveguides. We also briefly review applications of Rydberg superatoms to quantum optics such as single-photon generation and single-photon subtraction.
Interactions between Rydberg atoms can result in a dipole blockade for which the probability Pn{P}_{n}Pn​ to have nnn atomic excitations is reduced significantly when $n\ensuremath{\ge}2$. Ideally, this allows one to create a single collective Rydberg excitation in an atomic ensemble with P1=1{P}_{1}=1P1​=1. A single-photon source is realized by mapping this atomic excitation into a propagating light field. Even if ${P}_{n}\ensuremath{\ne}0$ for $n\ensuremath{\ge}2$, a single-photon source can be approximated if interaction-induced dephasing damps the contributions from multiply excited collective states into the preferred spatial field mode. Two quantities that can be used as figures of merit for these single-photon sources are the second-order correlation function g(2){g}^{(2)}g(2) associated with the phase-matched field emitted by the sample and the second-order correlation function g(A){g}^{(A)}g(A) associated with the atoms. Here we demonstrate that interaction-induced dephasing can lead to significant differences between g(2){g}^{(2)}g(2) and g(A){g}^{(A)}g(A) even if ${P}_{2}\ensuremath{\ll}{P}_{1}\ensuremath{\approx}1$. Theoretical expressions are derived for these quantities and it is shown that ${g}^{(2)}\ensuremath{\le}{g}^{(A)}$. It is also shown that there is a distinct advantage for minimizing g(2){g}^{(2)}\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}g(2) and g(A){g}^{(A)}g(A) by using adiabatic pulsed fields rather than constant amplitude fields to excite the ensemble. These results maybe useful for optimizing Rydberg single-photon sources.