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Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference

Photons made by vacuum-stimulated Raman scattering in an optical cavity

Axel Kuhn, Markus Hennrich, Thomas Legero, Gerhard Rempe

Published Nov 13, 2002• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Summary form only given. Many attempts to realize elementary quantum-logic gates as well as the feasible schemes for quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation are based on the availability of a single photon in a well defined mode of the radiation field. However, most employed schemes used for photon generation rely on spontaneous processes or on parametric down conversion and produce photons at more or less random times. Only recently, different photon generation schemes have been demonstrated, like a single-photon turnstile device, based on the Coulomb blockade mechanism in a quantum dot, the fluorescence excitation of a single molecule or the excitation of single colour centers or quantum dots. All these new schemes emit photons upon an external trigger event. However, the photons are spontaneously emitted into many modes of the radiation field and usually show a broad energy distribution. In contrast to these, our scheme leads to a photon emission into a single mode of the electromagnetic field of a high-Q optical cavity.

DOI
10.1109/qels.2001.962122

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Summary form only given. Many attempts to realize elementary quantum-logic gates as well as the feasible schemes for quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation are based on the availability of a single photon in a well defined mode of the radiation field. However, most employed schemes used for photon generation rely on spontaneous processes or on parametric down conversion and produce photons at more or less random times. Only recently, different photon generation schemes have been demonstrated, like a single-photon turnstile device, based on the Coulomb blockade mechanism in a quantum dot, the fluorescence excitation of a single molecule or the excitation of single colour centers or quantum dots. All these new schemes emit photons upon an external trigger event. However, the photons are spontaneously emitted into many modes of the radiation field and usually show a broad energy distribution. In contrast to these, our scheme leads to a photon emission into a single mode of the electromagnetic field of a high-Q optical cavity.
Summary form only given. In quantum information processing, a qubit is realised as a superposition of atomic or ionic eigenstates, or as a superposition of the states of a photon. A coupling between these different types of qubits is necessary to perform quantum operations or quantum transmissions, e.g. in a quantum network where single atoms or ions are entangled with individual photons. To generate such an entanglement in a controlled way, a triggered source for single photons, a photon pistol, will be needed. Our scheme will lead to the emission of one photon into a single, predetermined mode of the radiation field in response to a trigger event. This photon is emitted from an atom strongly coupled to a high-finesse optical cavity, and the trigger is a classical light pulse. The device combines cavity-QED with an adiabatic transfer technique. We consider a single lambda-type three-level atom being placed inside an empty cavity.
Single-photons of well-defined polarization that are deterministically generated in a single spatio-temporal field mode are the key to the creation of multi-partite entangled states in photonic networks. Here, we present a novel scheme to produce such photons from a single atom in an optical cavity, by means of vacuum-stimulated Raman transitions between the Zeeman substates of a single hyperfine state. Upon each transition, a photon is emitted into the cavity, with a polarization that depends on the direction of the Raman process.
Spontaneous emission of a source, such as an atom, is often thought of as an inherent property of the source, but is a result of the interaction between the radiating source dipole and the vacuum electromagnetic field. Therefore, the radiation emitted from an atom can be altered by suitably modifying the surrounding vacuum field [1] with a cavity. This has been verified by experiments initiated in the 1980s using atoms which are passed through a cavity and show enhanced[2] or inhibited[3] spontaneous emission. This field, called cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED), is currently addressing important issues in semiconductor nanostructures, in particular, high-efficiency light-emitting diodes for communications and single photon sources for quantum cryptography. [4,5] For example, quantum cryptography has emerged as a significant field of study over the last fifteen years, because it offers the promise of private communication whose security is assured by the laws of physics. Most implementations of quantum cryptography so far have used a protocol introduced by Bennet and Brassard, which uses four different states of a quantum system (generally known as BB84) [6 ]. For example, the message can be encoded on the polarization state of single photons, with a random choice between two non-othogonal polarization bases when the photons are sent (by Alice) and recieved (by Bob). Since an eavesdropper (Eve) does not know what bases have been chosen, any measurement she makes will impose a back-action on the states of the transmitted photons, which can be easily detected. Using error correction and privacy amplification, Alice and Bob can distill the transmitted message into a secure key about which Eve knows arbitrarily little.
Introduction Ever since 1916/17 when Einstein argued [45] [46] that spontaneous emission must occur if matter and radiation are to achieve thermal equilibrium, physicists have believed that spontaneous emission is an inherent quantum mechanical property of atoms and that excited atoms inevitably radiate. This view, however, overlooks the fact that spontaneous emission is a consequence of the coupling of quantized energy states of atoms with the quantized radiation field, and is a manifestation of quantum noise or of emission ‘stimulated’ by ‘vacuum fluctuations’. An infinity of vacuum states is available to the photon radiated by an excited atom placed in free space, leading to the effective irreversibility of such emissions. If these vacuum states are modified, as for example by placing an excited atom between closely spaced mirrors or in a small cavity (essentially the Casimir effect), spontaneous emission can be greatly inhibited or enhanced or even made reversible. Recent advances in atomic and optical techniques have made it possible to control and manipulate spontaneous emission. A whole new branch of quantum optics called ‘cavity QED’ has developed since 1987 utilizing these dramatic changes in spontaneous emission rates in cavities to construct new kinds of microscopic masers or micromasers that operate with a single atom and a few photons or with photons emitted in pairs in a two-photon transition.
Summary form only given. A source of single photons, each arriving within a known time interval, would be useful in the new field of quantum cryptography, where security from eavesdropping requires that only one photon be sent at a time. While other recent efforts to generate single photons have relied on saturated absorption in a single quantum emitter such as a molecule our method takes advantage of the emission properties of a single emitter, an InAs dot. When a laser pulse creates multiple electron-hole pairs (excitons), the last pair to recombine creates a photon at a unique wavelength, which can be spectrally separated from the others. This is because Coulomb interactions shift the emission wavelength when multiple excitons are present.
A deterministic "on demand" source of single photons is a basic building block for linear quantum computation \cite{linear}, quantum cryptography \cite{crypto}, quantum teleportation \cite{teleport}, and quantum networks \cite{network}. In all these applications, quantum interference between two single-photon pulses on a symmetric beam splitter has been exploited \cite{review}, which imposes stringent requirement for the implemented single photons to be indistinguishable in all degrees of freedom, including their frequencies, spectral widths, pulse shapes, and polarizations. To generate single photons one requires a pumping mechanism to excite a "two-level emitter" and an efficient channeling of the subsequently emitted photons. The efficiency of the source can be enhanced by coupling the emitter to the waveguide \cite{manga} or a microcavity mode \cite{cklaw}. However, hitherto the solid-state single photon sources realized by using a quantum dot coupled with a microcavity rely on incoherent pumping of excitons, which leads to problems with timing jitter \cite{kiraz}, leading to a trade off between efficiency and indistinguishability. Here we introduce a means to realize a highly efficient solid state source of indistinguishable single photons using cavity-assisted adiabatic Raman passage in a single quantum dot - cavity system. We demonstrate pulse-triggered single photons with 100% efficiency and >90>90>90% indistinguishability using currently available experimental parameters.