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arXiv:2202.10709 · Frontiers of Physics

Detecting a single atom in a cavity using the χ(2) nonlinear medium

Dongliang Chen, Ye‐Hong Chen, Yang Liu, Zhi‐Cheng Shi, Jie Song, Yan Xia

Published Apr 1, 2022• 3 citations
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Abstract

We propose a protocol for detecting a single atom in a cavity with the help of the χ (2) nonlinear medium. When the χ (2) nonlinear medium is driven by an external laser field, the cavity mode will be squeezed, and thus one can obtain an exponentially enhanced light-matter coupling. Such a strong coupling between the atom and the cavity field can significantly change the output photon flux, the quantum fluctuations, the quantum statistical property, and the photon number distributions of the cavity field. This provides practical strategies to determine the presence or absence of an atom in a cavity. The proposed protocol exhibits some advantages, such as controllable squeezing strength and exponential increase of atom-cavity coupling strength, which make the experimental phenomenon more obvious. We hope that this protocol can supplement the existing intracavity single-atom detection protocols and provide a promise for quantum sensing in different quantum systems.

DOI
10.1007/s11467-021-1151-0

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We propose a protocol for detecting a single atom in a cavity with the help of the χ (2) nonlinear medium. When the χ (2) nonlinear medium is driven by an external laser field, the cavity mode will be squeezed, and thus one can obtain an exponentially enhanced light-matter coupling. Such a strong coupling between the atom and the cavity field can significantly change the output photon flux, the quantum fluctuations, the quantum statistical property, and the photon number distributions of the cavity field. This provides practical strategies to determine the presence or absence of an atom in a cavity. The proposed protocol exhibits some advantages, such as controllable squeezing strength and exponential increase of atom-cavity coupling strength, which make the experimental phenomenon more obvious. We hope that this protocol can supplement the existing intracavity single-atom detection protocols and provide a promise for quantum sensing in different quantum systems.
We investigate a single atom cavity-QED system directly driven by a broadband squeezed light. We demonstrate how the squeezed radiation can be used to sense the presence of a single atom in a cavity. This happens by transferring one of the photons from the field in a state with an even number of photons to the atom and thereby populating an odd number of Fock states. Specifically, the presence of the atom is sensed by remarkable changing in the presence of one photon and the loss of squeezing of the cavity field. A complete study of quantum fluctuations and the excitation of multiphoton transitions is given.
Although conventional lasers operate with a large number of intracavity atoms, the lasing properties of a single atom in a resonant cavity have been theoretically investigated for more than a decade. Here we report the experimental realization of such a one-atom laser operated in a regime of strong coupling. Our experiment exploits recent advances in cavity quantum electrodynamics that allow one atom to be isolated in an optical cavity in a regime for which one photon is sufficient to saturate the atomic transition. In this regime the observed characteristics of the atom-cavity system are qualitatively different from those of the familiar many atom case. Specifically, we present measurements of intracavity photon number versus pump intensity that exhibit "thresholdless" behavior, and infer that the output flux from the cavity mode exceeds that from atomic fluorescence by more than tenfold. Observations of the second-order intensity correlation function demonstrate that our one-atom laser generates manifestly nonclassical light that exhibits both photon antibunching and sub-Poissonian photon statistics.
Cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) serves as a fundamental platform for studying light-matter interactions at a single-particle level and has been extensively investigated in fundamental physics and quantum information. Recent development of parametrically squeezed techniques has demonstrated that they have the remarkable ability to exponentially enhance coherent atom-cavity coupling. However, the full extent to which these techniques can manipulate quantum optical phenomena requires further exploration. This work systematically investigates the influence of optical parametric amplification on single-photon excited atom-cavity systems within a parametrically driven cavity. In the proposed model, optical parametric amplification converts the driving photons into a squeezed cavity mode, which enhances the atom-cavity interaction into the strong coupling region. Through analytical derivation of atomic and cavity radiation spectra, we demonstrate that the optical parametric amplification induces splitting of atomic radiation spectra while exerting negligible effects on spectral intensity. Conversely, the cavity transmission spectrum exhibits both pronounced splitting and nonlinear intensity amplification. Notably, as driving field intensity approaches a critical intensity regime, the cavity radiation spectrum intensity is significantly enhanced. The underlying mechanism is parametric driving amplification, which converts the driving light into a squeezed cavity mode. When this squeezed mode is mapped back to the fundamental mode of the cavity through Bogoliubov squeezing transformation, the pump photons within the squeezed cavity mode are converted into the photons that contribute to the radiation spectrum of the cavity, thereby amplifying its intensity. This parametric enhancement method not only deepens the basic understanding of light-matter interactions, but also establishes a practical framework for improving the single-photon detection sensitivity in cavity-based quantum systems. These findings have broad prospects for quantum sensing and information processing applications.
Cavity quantum electrodynamics describes the fundamental interactions between light and matter, and how they can be controlled by shaping the local environment. For example, optical microcavities allow high-efficiency detection and manipulation of single atoms. In this regime, fluctuations of atom number are on the order of the mean number, which can lead to signal fluctuations in excess of the noise on the incident probe field. Here we demonstrate, however, that nonlinearities and multi-atom statistics can together serve to suppress the effects of atomic fluctuations when making local density measurements on clouds of cold atoms. We measure atom densities below 1 per cavity mode volume near the photon shot-noise limit. This is in direct contrast to previous experiments where fluctuations in atom number contribute significantly to the noise. Atom detection is shown to be fast and efficient, reaching fidelities in excess of 97% after 10 μs and 99.9% after 30 μs.
We propose a scheme to enhance the light-matter coupling in a cavity QED system where two $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$ atoms are weakly coupled to a single-mode cavity via multiphoton interaction. By introducing a second-order nonlinear (parametric) driving of the cavity, the original NNN-photon exchanges between the atoms, and the cavity can be reduced to either an effective single- or two-photon transition depending on the odevity of NNN, with the effective atom-field interaction strength being significantly enhanced. This results in an NNN-dependent effective coupling strength on top of the exponential enhancement induced only by the parametric driving. As an example, we demonstrate that our proposal can be exploited for the preparation of high-fidelity steady-state entanglement. The proposed scheme could provide a feasible alternative for diverse applications in quantum technologies.
We consider an optical cavity containing a single two-level atom driven on resonance by an external laser source.1 We focus on the limit of weak excitation where the dynamic response of this system is governed by just three parameters: the atom-field coupling constant g, spontaneous emission rate γ for the atom, and cavity decay rate κ. The statistics of the transmitted light are analyzed as a function of g, γ, and κ, in terms of the second-order correlation function g(2)(τ), and the quadrature variances measured in a homodyne detection scheme. Squeezing and photon antibunching exist over a wide range of parameters. For γ ~ κ, the system can exhibit an oscillatory response, even when the mean intracavity photon number is much less than unity.2 The oscillations can be understood in terms of the coupling between the free atom-field eigenstates |0,−>, |0,+>, and |1,−>. The oscillation frequency is determined by the energy level splitting produced between the degenerate one-quantum states |0,+> and |1,−> by the atom-field interaction. The second-order correlation function can exhibit a novel nonclassical effect, where, for g(2)(0) ≠ 0, at some finite delay τ0, the correlation function dips exactly to zero—g(2)(τ0) = 0.