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arXiv:1911.09701 · Nature Photonics

Correlating photons using the collective nonlinear response of atoms weakly coupled to an optical mode

Adarsh S. Prasad, Jakob Hinney, Sahand Mahmoodian, Klemens Hammerer, Samuel Rind, Philipp Schneeweiß, Anders S. Sørensen, Jürgen Volz, Arno Rauschenbeutel

Published Sep 21, 2020• 129 citations
arXivHTMLPDF
DOI
10.1038/s41566-020-0692-z

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The generation of correlated photons typically requires a highly nonlinear medium that is strongly coupled to an optical mode. Recently, significant advances have been made in this direction by strongly coupling photons to quantum emitters and exploiting the inherently nonlinear response of the latter. A number of methods have been pursued for this purpose, employing, e.g., high finesse optical cavities or strongly interacting Rydberg atoms. However, the implementation of strong and low-loss photon-photon interactions remains a challenging goal.
Typical schemes for generating correlated states of light require a highly nonlinear medium that is strongly coupled to an optical mode. However, unavoidable dissipative processes, which cause photon loss and blur nonlinear quantum effects, often impede such methods. In this talk, I will report on our experimental implementation of the opposite approach. Using a strongly dissipative, weakly coupled medium, we generate and study strongly correlated states of light. Specifically, we study the transmission of resonant light through an ensemble of non-interacting atoms that weakly couple to a guided optical mode. Dissipation removes uncorrelated photons while preferentially transmitting highly correlated photons, created through collectively enhanced nonlinear interactions. As a result, the transmitted light constitutes a strongly correlated many-body state of light, revealed in the second-order correlation function. The latter exhibits strong antibunching or bunching, depending on the optical depth of the atomic ensemble. The demonstrated mechanism opens a new avenue for generating nonclassical states of light and for exploring correlations of photons in non-equilibrium systems using a mix of nonlinear and dissipative processes.
We model and investigate the collective nonlinear optical response of an ensemble of two-level emitters that are weakly coupled to a waveguide featuring a single spatial mode. Our approach generalizes the insight that photon-photon correlations in the light scattered by a single two-level emitter result from two-photon interference to the case of many emitters. Using our model, developed for coherent driving in the weak-saturation regime, we study different configurations for probing the nonlinear response of the ensemble, e.g., through the waveguide or via external illumination, and derive analytical expressions for the second-order quantum coherence function, g ( 2 ) ( τ ) , as well as for the squeezing spectrum of the output light in the waveguide, S θ ( ω ) . For the transmission of resonant guided light, we recover the same predictions as previously made with more involved theoretical models when analyzing experimental results regarding g ( 2 ) ( τ ) [Prasad , ] and S θ ( ω ) [Hinney , ]. We also study the transmission of light that is detuned from the transition of the two-level emitter, a situation that we recently studied experimentally [Cordier , ]. Our model predictions show how the collectively enhanced nonlinear response of weakly coupled emitters can be harnessed to generate nonclassical states of light using ensembles ranging from a few to many emitters.