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arXiv:1910.04352 · Physical Review Applied

Strong Photon Blockade Mediated by Optical Stark Shift in a Single-Atom–Cavity System

Jing Tang, Yuangang Deng, Chaohong Lee

Published Oct 29, 2019• 37 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Realizing single-photon sources plays an essential role in quantum information science. The key step for generating a single photon is to attain strong photon blockade, based on either strong energy-spectrum anharmonicity or quantum interference to eliminate two-photon excitation. However, the strong coupling in a high-finesse cavity that is needed for these mechanisms is still a challenge. In this work, strong photon antibunching with a large cavity photon number is predicted, by combining the optical Stark shift with anharmonicity and quantum interference beyond the strong-coupling regime. This proposal suggests exciting opportunities for applications in $e.g.$ quantum networks.

DOI
10.1103/physrevapplied.12.044065

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Realizing single-photon sources plays an essential role in quantum information science. The key step for generating a single photon is to attain strong photon blockade, based on either strong energy-spectrum anharmonicity or quantum interference to eliminate two-photon excitation. However, the strong coupling in a high-finesse cavity that is needed for these mechanisms is still a challenge. In this work, strong photon antibunching with a large cavity photon number is predicted, by combining the optical Stark shift with anharmonicity and quantum interference beyond the strong-coupling regime. This proposal suggests exciting opportunities for applications in e.g.e.g.e.g. quantum networks.
Single photons and single-photon pairs, inherently nonclassical in their nature, are fundamental elements of quantum sciences and technologies. Here, we propose to realize the nonclassical correlated deterministic photon pairs at the single-photon level for a single atom trapped in bimodal cavities. It is shown that the photon emissions for bimodal cavities exhibit a high single-photon purity and relatively large intracavity photon numbers, which are ascribed to the combination of optical Stark-shift enhanced energy-spectrum anharmonicity and quantum interference suppressed two-photon excitation. Our scheme generates photon-photon pairs with strong photon blockade for cavity modes via constructing a highly tunable cavity-enhanced deterministic parametric down-conversion process. Furthermore, we show that the cross-correlation function between the two cavity modes vastly violates the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality of the classical boundary, which unambiguously demonstrates the nonclassicality of the single-photon pairs. Our result reveals a prominent strategy to generate the high-quality two-mode single-photon sources with strong nonclassical correlation, which could provide versatile applications in distribution of quantum networks, long-distance quantum communication, and fundamental tests of quantum physics.
We present an experimental proposal to achieve a strong photon blockade by employing electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) with a single alkaline-earth-metal atom trapped in an optical cavity. In the presence of optical Stark shift, both the second-order correlation function and cavity transmission exhibit asymmetric structures between the red and blue sidebands of the cavity. For a weak control field, the photon quantum statistics for the coherent transparency window (i.e., atomic quasi-dark-state resonance) are insensitive to the Stark shift, which should also be immune to the spontaneous emission of the excited state by taking advantage of the intrinsic dark-state polariton of EIT. Interestingly, by exploiting the interplay between the Stark shift and control field, the strong photon blockade at atomic quasi-dark-state resonance has an optimal second-order correlation function g ( 2 ) ( 0 ) ∼ 10 − 4 and a high cavity transmission simultaneously. The underlying physical mechanism is ascribed to the Stark shift enhanced spectrum anharmonicity and the EIT hosted strong nonlinearity with loss-insensitive atomic quasi-dark-state resonance, which is essentially different from the conventional proposal with emerging Kerr nonlinearity in cavity-EIT. Our results reveal a new strategy to realize high-quality single photon sources, which could open up a new avenue for engineering nonclassical quantum states in cavity quantum electrodynamics.
High-quality special nonclassical states beyond the strong single atom-cavity coupling regime are fundamental elements in quantum information science. Here, we study strong single-photon blockade to two-photon bundles emission in a single spin-1 atom coupled to an optical cavity by constructing a spin-1 Jaynes–Cummings model (JCM). By tuning the quadratic Zeeman shift, the energy-spectrum anharmonicity can be significantly enhanced, leading to a remarkable increase in the dressed-state splitting of the well-resolved n-photon resonance. The mechanism, which benefits from the internal degrees of freedom in high-spin systems, compensates for the strong coupling condition required by the multi-photon blockade, thereby facilitating the experimental feasibility of engineering special nonclassical states beyond the strong-coupling limit. It is shown that the photon emission from the spin-1 JCM demonstrates high-quality single photon and two-photon bundles with large steady-state photon numbers in the cavity-driven and atom-pump cases, respectively. In particular, compared to the two-level two-photon JCM, the antibunching amplitude of the three-order correlation function for two-photon bundles in the spin-1 JCM is enhanced by 3 orders of magnitude. More interestingly, a multimode transducer, enabling a transition from strong single-photon blockade to two-photon bundles and super-Poissonian photon emission, is achieved and highly controllable by the light-cavity detuning in the presence of both atom and cavity driven fields. This study based on the high-spin JCM broadens the scope of engineering special nonclassical quantum states beyond the standard two-level JCM. Our proposal not only opens up a new avenue for generating high-quality n-photon sources but also provides versatile applications in quantum networks and metrology.
Photon blockade is a dynamical quantum-nonlinear effect in driven systems with an anharmonic energy ladder. For a single atom strongly coupled to an optical cavity, we show that atom driving gives a decisively larger optical nonlinearity than cavity driving. This enhances single-photon blockade and allows for the implementation of two-photon blockade where the absorption of two photons suppresses the absorption of further photons. As a signature, we report on three-photon antibunching with simultaneous two-photon bunching observed in the light emitted from the cavity. Our experiment constitutes a significant step towards multiphoton quantum-nonlinear optics.
A two-level system interacting with a cavity field is an important model for investigating the photon blockade (PB) effect. Most work on this topic has been based on the assumption that the atomic transition frequency is resonant with the fundamental mode frequency of the cavity. We relax this constraint and reexamine PB in a more general atom--cavity system with arbitrary atomic and cavity detunings from a driving field. The results show that when the signs of the atomic and cavity detunings are the same, PB occurs only in the strong-coupling regime, but for opposite signs of the atomic and cavity detunings, strong photon antibunching is observed in both the weak- and strong-coupling regimes and a better PB effect is achieved compared with the case when the signs are the same. More interestingly, we find that this PB arises from quantum interference for both weak and strong nonlinearities. These results deepen our understanding of the underlying mechanism of PB and may be help in the construction of single-photon sources with higher purity and better flexibility using atom--cavity systems.
We present a study of collective multiphoton blockade in coherently driven atoms in a single-mode cavity. Considering two atoms strongly coupled to an optical cavity, we show that the two-photon blockade with two-photon antibunching, and the three-photon blockade with three-photon antibunching can be observed simultaneously. The three-photon blockade probes both dressed states in the two-photon and three-photon spaces. The two-photon and three-photon blockades strongly depend on the location of the two atoms in the strong-coupling regime. The asymmetry in the atom-cavity coupling constants opens pathways for multiphoton blockade which is also shown to be sensitive to the atomic decay and pumping strengths. The work presented here predicts many quantum statistical features due to the collective behavior of atoms and can be useful to generate nonclassical photon pairs.