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arXiv:2605.18525

Realization of waveguide many-body quantum optics

Lena M. Hansen, Clara Henke, Christoph Hotter, Oliver A. D. Sandberg, Thomas Wilkens Sandø, Vasiliki Angelopoulou, Alexey Tiranov, Christoffer B. Møller, Zhe Liu, Leonardo Midolo, Nikolai Bart, Arne Ludwig, Philip Walther, Cornelis J. van Diepen, Peter Lodahl, Anders Søndberg Sørensen

quant-phSubmitted May 18, 2026• Announced May 19, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

Controlling light photon-by-photon is central to quantum optics. At a fundamental level, photon interactions are mediated by their coupling to atoms, and ultimate control requires deterministic light-matter interfacing of single photons to single atoms. Extending this paradigm to radiatively couple multiple individual atoms in a deterministic and scalable manner opens the arena of many-body quantum optics. Here, we realize such a setting by coherently coupling solid-state artificial atoms to a nanophotonic waveguide and demonstrate higher-order photon correlations that are controlled by the number of quantum emitters. We study the scaling of nonlinear photonic transport induced by emitter-photon scattering and demonstrate that adding a quantum emitter generates higher-order photon correlations. Specifically, we experimentally observe genuine three-photon correlations from a pair of collectively coupled emitters, while contributions from lower photon numbers are suppressed. In addition, we scale to three resonant quantum emitters coupled to the waveguide. These advancements demonstrate the onset of many-body quantum optics in waveguide quantum electrodynamics, enabling new photonic quantum simulators, the creation of many-body entangled states, and the exploration of novel quantum phase transitions.

Comments
24 pages, 22 figures

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