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Physical Review A

Quantum interference effects of a single photon interacting with an atomic chain inside a one-dimensional waveguide

T. S. Tsoi, C. K. Law

Published Dec 22, 2008• 121 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We investigate the interaction between a single photon and a chain of $N$ equally spaced two-level atoms inside a one-dimensional waveguide. By solving the eigenvectors of the Hamiltonian in the subspace with a single excitation, we address quantum interference effects in two physical processes. First, we analyze the scattering of a single photon when atoms are all initially at their ground states. We discover a set of transmission peaks determined by $N$. These transmission peaks are narrow and sensitive to the relative position between atoms. Second, we examine the spontaneous emission of a photon from an excited atom in the chain in vacuum. The characteristic atomic decay rates are found to be enhanced and reduced by increasing the number of atoms. In particular, the slowest decay rate scales approximately as ${N}^{\ensuremath{-}3}$.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.78.063832

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We investigate the interaction between a single photon and a chain of NNN equally spaced two-level atoms inside a one-dimensional waveguide. By solving the eigenvectors of the Hamiltonian in the subspace with a single excitation, we address quantum interference effects in two physical processes. First, we analyze the scattering of a single photon when atoms are all initially at their ground states. We discover a set of transmission peaks determined by NNN. These transmission peaks are narrow and sensitive to the relative position between atoms. Second, we examine the spontaneous emission of a photon from an excited atom in the chain in vacuum. The characteristic atomic decay rates are found to be enhanced and reduced by increasing the number of atoms. In particular, the slowest decay rate scales approximately as N\ensuremath−3{N}^{\ensuremath{-}3}N\ensuremath−3.
We investigate the quantum scattering involving a single photon and a chain of NNN polarized $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$-type three-level atoms inside a one-dimensional waveguide. By using a transfer matrix method, we obtain analytic expressions of eigenvectors of the Hamiltonian, which determine the polarization dependent transmission and reflection spectra for a single photon. We show that the scattering is most significant when the interatomic distance equals an integer multiple plus a quarter of the resonance wavelength. In such a configuration, an incident photon with an unknown polarization can be converted into a specified polarization with a transmission probability higher than that in polarizers obeying Malus's law.
We study the decay of a single-photon pulse inside a cavity consisting of two atomic mirrors coupled to a one-dimensional waveguide. The finesse of the cavity can be increased with proper choice of coupling strength, cavity length, spontaneous decay rate, and separation between atoms. The loss rate of a single-photon pulse inside the cavity can be decreased with narrower spectrum width and smaller detuning between the photon pulse and the atomic resonance. The decay of a single-photon pulse in the atomic cavity can be significantly slowed down with proper parameters and the increase of the number of atoms within the atomic mirrors.
Second-order interference effects in the spontaneous emission by two identical two-level atoms, separated a distance apart and both initially excited, are considered. On the basis of the analysis in our previous paper published in 2004, within fourth-order perturbation, detailed analysis of the second-order quantum interference in the emitted field is made. The interference arises both from single-photon states and two-photon states owing to interferences between different decaying sequences. By detailed analysis we have found some cancellations between single-photon and two-photon interference terms, and an interpretation of this is given. The contributions from the single- and the two-photon states as well as the total interference are analysed numerically for various interatomic distances and times. The contribution from a two-photon state is mostly larger than that from a single-photon state except when the atomic electric dipole is large, in which case the two contributions can be comparable. It is shown that the emission patterns from the two interacting atoms provide more information on atom–atom correlations than the decay time evolution of the atomic states population does. The number of interference fringes and the distance between them depend on the interatomic distance in a similar fashion to Young's interference fringes.
We examine quantum interference effects due to absorption and emission from multiple atoms coupled to a waveguide and highlight the modifications they entail with regard to single-photon transport properties. A prominent upshot of these interference phenomena is the resonant suppression of the reflection amplitude, which leads to the observation of multiple Fano minima in the reflection spectrum. Such minima determine the points at which transparency is induced in the system. By taking recourse to the real-space Hamiltonian framework, we calculate analytically the reflectivity and transmissivity for a one-dimensional waveguide that evanescently couples to a chain of equally spaced quantum emitters. The interemitter spacing relative to the wavelength of the propagating photon, leading to a waveguide-mediated ``phase coupling'' between the atoms, is found to fundamentally affect the existence of Fano minima. For a chain of NNN atoms, the number of minima can be at most $N\ensuremath{-}1$. However, suitable choices of the phase can suppress the discernibility of the full range of roots in the reflection spectrum. A principal observation for the case of multiple emitters is the emergence of super-Gaussian characteristics close to zero detuning and, consequently, a plateau-shaped broadband spectrum in the region of high reflectivity. For a large chain size, the plateau gets transformed into a flat-topped quasirectangular profile in the frequency domain.
We investigate the propagation of microwave photons in a one-dimensional open waveguide interacting with a number of artificial atoms (qubits). Within the formalism of projection operators and a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian approach we develop a one-photon approximation scheme for the calculation of the transmission and reflection factors of the microwave signal in a waveguide which contains an arbitrary number NNN of noninteracting qubits. We considered in detail the resonances and photon-mediated entanglement for two and three qubits in a chain. We showed that in the non-Markovian case the resonance widths, which define the decay rates of the entangled state, can be much smaller than the decay width of an individual qubit. It is also shown that for identical qubits in the long-wavelength limit a coherent superradiant state is formed with the width being equal to the sum of the widths of spontaneous transitions of NNN individual qubits. The results obtained in the paper are of general nature and can be applied to any type of qubits. The specific properties of the qubit are only encoded in the two parameters: the qubit energy $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Omega}}$ and the rate of spontaneous emission $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}$.
We present a time-dependent quantum calculations of the first order and second order photon correlation functions for the scattering of a single-photon pulse on a two-level atom (qubit) embedded in a one-dimensional open waveguide. Within Markov approximation we find the analytic expression for the quantum operator of positive frequency electric field. We restricted Hilbert space of initial states by the states with one and two excitations and show that the photon probability amplitudes are given by the off-diagonal matrix elements of the electric field operator between these states. For two-excitation initial state where the atom is excited and there exists a single photon in a waveguide we calculate the second order correlation function which describes the measurements by two detectors at two different space-time points. The second order correlation function exhibits the interference term showing that the measurements of two detectors are correlated. This interference is similar to that found in the Hanbury Brown and Twiss correlation experiment with two indistinguishable photons.