We study theoretically a laser-driven one-dimensional chain of atoms interfaced with the guided optical modes of a nanophotonic waveguide. The period of the chain and the orientation of the laser field can be chosen such that emission occurs predominantly into a single guided mode. We find that the fluorescence excitation line shape changes as the number of atoms is increased, eventually undergoing a splitting that provides evidence for the waveguide-mediated all-to-all interactions. Remarkably, in the regime of strong driving the light emitted into the waveguide is nonclassical with a significant negativity of the associated Wigner function. We show that both the emission properties and the non-Gaussian character of the light are robust against voids in the atom chain, enabling the experimental study of these effects with present-day technology. Our results offer a route towards novel types of fiber-coupled quantum light sources and an interesting perspective for probing the physics of interacting atomic ensembles through light.
We study theoretically a laser-driven one-dimensional chain of atoms interfaced with the guided optical modes of a nanophotonic waveguide. The period of the chain and the orientation of the laser field can be chosen such that emission occurs predominantly into a single guided mode. We find that the fluorescence excitation line shape changes as the number of atoms is increased, eventually undergoing a splitting that provides evidence for the waveguide-mediated all-to-all interactions. Remarkably, in the regime of strong driving the light emitted into the waveguide is nonclassical with a significant negativity of the associated Wigner function. We show that both the emission properties and the non-Gaussian character of the light are robust against voids in the atom chain, enabling the experimental study of these effects with present-day technology. Our results offer a route towards novel types of fiber-coupled quantum light sources and an interesting perspective for probing the physics of interacting atomic ensembles through light.
We theoretically investigate the quantum scattering of a weak coherent input field interacting with an ensemble of $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$-type three-level atoms coupled to a one-dimensional waveguide. With an effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian, we study the collective interaction between the atoms mediated by the waveguide mode. In our scheme, the atoms are randomly placed in the lattice along the axis of the one-dimensional waveguide. Many interesting optical properties occur in our waveguide-atom system, such as electromagnetically induced transparency. We quantify the influence of decoherence originating from both dephasing and population relaxation, and analyze the effect of the inhomogeneous broadening on the transport properties of the incident field. Moreover, we observe that strong photon-photon correlation with quantum beats can be generated in the off-resonant case, which provides an effective method for producing nonclassical light in experiment. With remarkable progress in waveguide-emitter systems, our scheme may be experimentally feasible in the near future.
Optical waveguides in the form of glass fibers are the backbone of global telecommunication networks. In such optical fibers, the light is guided over long distances by continuous total internal reflection which occurs at the interface between the fiber core with a higher refractive index and the lower index cladding. Although this mechanism ensures that no light escapes from the waveguide, it gives rise to an evanescent field in the cladding. While this field is protected from interacting with the environment in standard optical fibers, it is routinely employed in air- or vacuum-clad fibers in order to efficiently couple light fields to optical components or emitters using, e.g., tapered optical fiber couplers. Remarkably, the strong confinement imposed by the latter can lead to significant coupling of the light's spin and orbital angular momentum. Taking advantage of this effect, we demonstrate the controlled directional spontaneous emission of light by quantum emitters into a sub-wavelength-diameter waveguide. The effect is investigated in a paradigmatic setting, comprising cesium atoms which are located in the vicinity of a vacuum-clad silica nanofiber. We experimentally observe an asymmetry higher than 10:1 in the emission rates into the counterpropagating fundamental guided modes of the nanofiber. Moreover, we demonstrate that this asymmetry can be tailored by state preparation and suitable excitation of the quantum emitters. We expect our results to have important implications for research in nanophotonics and quantum optics and for implementations of integrated optical signal processing in the classical as well as in the quantum regime.
Techniques to controllably interface atoms with quantum optical fields form the basis for many applications in quantum information science. For example, photons are convenient to relay information over large quantum networks, while atoms naturally are physical systems that can process and store this information. Thus far, the available techniques to efficiently couple single photons with atomic media fall into one of the following, mostly independent, categories: i) cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED), where atomic interactions with light are enhanced via a high-finesse cavity, ii) coherent coupling with atomic ensembles exhibiting large optical depths, and iii) the use of fields tightly focused to dimensions smaller than or approaching the scattering cross-section of a single atom. Although remarkable achievements have been made with all of these approaches, a robust, scalable technique remains elusive. Recently, several groups have successfully demonstrated that cold atoms can be trapped near and interfaced with nanophotonic systems, such as hollow-core photonic crystal fibers [1] and tapered nanofibers [2–4]. The traps are well-characterized [2, 3, 5], and the nearly diffraction-limited transverse confinement of optical fields enables ∼ 10% coupling efficiency of a single atom to the fiber [2, 3]. This has already led to remarkable observations of strong light-matter interactions using relatively few atoms and low powers [1]. It has also been proposed that such techniques can be extended to highly configurable photonic crystal waveguides [6]. Together, these efforts raise the intriguing possibility for future nanophotonic systems with tremendous figures of merit, wherein atom-light interactions can be tailored nearly at will. Here, we discuss recent efforts to develop novel techniques to realize strong, controllable atom-photon and photon-photon interactions, which take full advantage of the parameter space afforded by nanophotonic interfaces and are not based upon the extension of existing techniques. As a specific example, we discuss a protocol to achieve “all-atomic” cavity QED [7], as briefly described below. First, we show that although the single-atom coupling to guided modes of a nanophotonic waveguide might be relatively weak, there exist collective modes of a trapped atomic ensemble whose coupling to light is enhanced by the square root of the atom number, √ NA. While collective effects are generally well-known, special consequences emerge in the nanofiber system when the atoms are trapped in a lattice. In particular, collective effects cause such a lattice to act as a near-perfect mirror for an incident field close to resonance. In analogy to cavity QED, we then demonstrate that two sets of atomic mirrors can form an effective cavity, which can greatly enhance the coupling of a single, specially chosen “impurity” atom (or a few impurity atoms) positioned inside. We introduce a novel quantum spin model to describe the atom-light coupling, which allows one to exactly map the atom-nanofiber interface onto the simple and elegant Jaynes-Cummings model of cavity QED [8]. A unique feature of our atomic mirrors compared to conventional cavities is that they have long relaxation times and are highly dispersive. Remarkably, even with very low mirror finesse (F ∼ 10 2 ), this property allows one to attain the “strong coupling” regime of cavity QED, where vacuum Rabi oscillations [9–12] occur between an excited impurity atom and a single “photon” stored in the cavity (or more precisely, in the atomic mirrors). Furthermore, as quantum mechanical objects, these atom mirrors can be used to store quantum information and transfer this information into propagating waveguide modes. These various features can be combined to realize all of the building blocks for scalable quantum information processing.
We experimentally and theoretically investigate collective radiative effects in an ensemble of cold atoms coupled to a single-mode optical nanofiber. Our analysis unveils the microscopic dynamics of the system, showing that collective interactions between the atoms and a single guided photon gradually build up along the atomic array in the direction of propagation of light. These results are supported by time-resolved measurements of the light transmitted and reflected by the ensemble after excitation via nanofiber-guided laser pulses, whose rise and fall times are shorter than the atomic lifetime. Superradiant decays more than 1 order of magnitude faster than the single-atom free-space decay rate are observed for emission in the forward-propagating guided mode, while at the same time, no speed-up of the decay rate is measured in the backward direction. In addition, position-resolved measurements of the light that is transmitted past the atoms are performed by inserting the nanofiber-coupled atomic array in a 45-m-long fiber ring resonator, which allow us to experimentally reveal the progressive growth of the collective response of the atomic ensemble. Our results highlight the unique opportunities offered by nanophotonic cold atom systems for the experimental investigation of collective light-matter interaction.
Realizing efficient interactions between photons and multiple quantum emitters is an important ingredient in quantum optics and quantum information processing. Here we theoretically study the optical properties of an ensemble of two-level atoms coupled to a one-dimensional waveguide. In our model, the atoms are randomly located in the lattice sites along the one-dimensional waveguide. The results reveal that the optical transport properties of the atomic ensemble are influenced by the lattice constant and the filling factor of the lattice sites. We also focus on the atomic mirror configuration and quantify the effect of the inhomogeneous broadening in atomic resonant transition on the scattering spectrum. Since atoms are randomly placed in the lattice sites, we analyze the influence of the atomic spatial distributions on the transmission spectrum. Furthermore, we find that initial bunching and quantum beats appear in photon-photon correlation function of the transmitted field, which are significantly changed by filling factor of the lattice sites. With great progress to interface quantum emitters with nanophotonics, our results should be experimentally realizable in the near future.
We study the dynamics of a single-photon pulse traveling through a linear atomic chain coupled to a one-dimensional (1D) single mode photonic waveguide. We derive a time-dependent dynamical theory for this collective many-body system which allows us to study the real time evolution of the photon transport and the atomic excitations. Our analytical result is consistent with previous numerical calculations when there is only one atom. For an atomic chain, the collective interaction between the atoms mediated by the waveguide mode can significantly change the dynamics of the system. The reflectivity of a photon can be tuned by changing the ratio of coupling strength and the photon linewidth or by changing the number of atoms in the chain. The reflectivity of a single-photon pulse with finite bandwidth can even approach 100. The spectrum of the reflected and transmitted photon can also be significantly different from the single-atom case. Many interesting physical phenomena can occur in this system such as the photonic band-gap effects, quantum entanglement generation, Fano-like interference, and superradiant effects. For engineering, this system may serve as a single-photon frequency filter, single-photon modulation, and may find important applications in quantum information.