Fock states are the most fundamental quantum states of bosonic fields, forming an important basis for understanding their quantum dynamics. As energy and number eigenstates, they have an exactly defined number of quanta, and most faithfully express the particle nature of fields. These properties make them attractive for many applications in metrology, and quantum simulation and information processing. Yet, Fock states are notoriously difficult to generate. The problem is especially acute in optics, where it is difficult to deterministically produce Fock states with more than a single photon, let alone at macroscopic scales. This is in part due to a dearth of mechanisms to produce large Fock states, as well as the deleterious effects of linear dissipation. Here, we introduce a new effect in the physics of nonlinear bosons, arising from the interplay of dissipation and Kerr nonlinearity. In this effect, a nonlinear resonance is dissipationless when it has a particular number of quanta (e.g., photons) inside it, and lossy otherwise. This loss, which results from nonlinear interference, leads to several new quantum statistical effects. For example, it leads to spontaneous condensation of intensity noise, which may enable generation of large Fock and extremely photon-number-squeezed states of light. We also show how this effect has implications for new classes of optoelectronic devices such as lasers, which can stabilize extremely low-noise states in an equilibrium between gain and the nonlinear loss that we introduce. Throughout the text, we present examples of systems that may realize these effects. In one, we show how the nonlinear dissipation could lead to optical Fock states of
n=1000, while in another, we show how conventional laser architectures could be used to generate macroscopic light (
>1012 photons) with nearly 95% less noise than the standard quantum limit.
A scheme for giant enhancement of the Kerr nonlinearity in linear triple quantum dot molecules is proposed. In such a system, the tunneling-induced transparency window obtained in double quantum dot molecules splits into two windows, due to the coupling with the third quantum dot. And most important, the Kerr nonlinearity can be enhanced by several orders of magnitude, compared with that generated in double quantum dot molecules. With proper detuning of the tunneling, giant Kerr nonlinearity accompanied by vanishing absorption can be realized, which opens the possibility to enhance self-phase modulation in tunneling controllable semiconductor nanostructures under conditions of low light levels. Quantitative analysis shows that the giant Kerr nonlinearity is attributed to the interacting double dark resonances induced by the tunneling between the triple quantum dots, therefore no extra laser fields are required.
We consider an active-Raman-gain scheme for realizing giant Kerr nonlinearity and superluminal optical solitons in a four-state atomic system with a gain doublet. We show that this scheme, which is fundamentally different from those based on electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), is capable of working at room temperature and eliminating nearly all attenuation and distortion.We demonstrate that, due to the appearance of a gain spectrum hole induced by the quantum interference effect induced by a signal field, a significant enhancement of Kerr nonlinearity of probe field can be realized effectively, which can be more than ten times larger than that arrived by the EIT-based scheme with the same energy-level configuration. Based on these important features, we obtain a giant cross-phase modulation effect and hence a stable long-distance propagation of optical solitons, which have superluminal propagating velocity and very low generating power.