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Physical Review A

Photon-number-limiting device for nonclassical light generation

R. L. de Matos Filho, J. C. Retamal, Nicim Zagury

Published Jan 9, 2006• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a scheme for the realization of a stationary source of nonclassical light, which approximates very well a continuous single-photon source. It consists of a single four-level atom trapped inside a high-finesse optical cavity and Raman coupled to a cavity mode. A selectivity mechanism, based on a field-dependent Stark shift of electronic levels, prevents the occupation of two or more photon states of the quantized mode being excited. The output light of such a source exhibits sub-Poissonian photon-number statistics and antibunching behavior.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.73.013808

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We present a scheme for the realization of a stationary source of nonclassical light, which approximates very well a continuous single-photon source. It consists of a single four-level atom trapped inside a high-finesse optical cavity and Raman coupled to a cavity mode. A selectivity mechanism, based on a field-dependent Stark shift of electronic levels, prevents the occupation of two or more photon states of the quantized mode being excited. The output light of such a source exhibits sub-Poissonian photon-number statistics and antibunching behavior.
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.
We propose a model for a single-trapped-ion vibronic Raman laser and study its dynamics by using quantum-trajectory methods. In our treatment, it is essential that both the cavity field of the high-finesse optical cavity and the center-of-mass vibrational motion of the trapped ion be quantized. A transition from a super-Poissonian light source to a Poissonian lasing regime is obtained by increasing the Raman coupling constant. Furthermore, we demonstrate that a nonclassical regime can be realized, where the photon statistics becomes sub-Poissonian and the photons leak out of the cavity in an antibunched manner. This is achieved by exploiting nonlinear Stark shifts inherent in the model, which depend on both the number of cavity photons and the number of vibrational quanta.
We investigate the effects of sub-Poissonian photon statistics and photon antibunching in the light generation by a photonic-crystal one-atom laser. The physical system consists of a two-level light emitter strongly coupled to a high-quality microcavity engineered within a photonic crystal and coherently driven by a strong external laser field. This study reveals that the electromagnetic environment provided by the photonic crystal facilitates light generation characterized by pronounced sub-Poissonian photon statistics and photon antibunching, and strongly enhanced relative to that from a one-atom laser in a conventional optical cavity. The characteristics of the cavity photon statistics are fundamentally distinct from those of a corresponding microcavity in ordinary vacuum. For large discontinuities in the photon density of states between Mollow spectral components of atomic resonance fluorescence, in the good cavity regime, the photon statistics is sub-Poissonian, in contrast to the case of a conventional cavity where sub-Poissonian photon statistics is present only for a bad cavity. These results suggest the possibility of using a photonic-crystal one-atom laser as an efficient source of nonclassical light.
Realizing single-photon sources plays an essential role in quantum information science. The key step for generating a single photon is to attain strong photon blockade, based on either strong energy-spectrum anharmonicity or quantum interference to eliminate two-photon excitation. However, the strong coupling in a high-finesse cavity that is needed for these mechanisms is still a challenge. In this work, strong photon antibunching with a large cavity photon number is predicted, by combining the optical Stark shift with anharmonicity and quantum interference beyond the strong-coupling regime. This proposal suggests exciting opportunities for applications in e.g.e.g.e.g. quantum networks.
The active microcavity is adopted as an efficient source of nonclassical light. Using this device, excited with a mode-locked laser at a rate of 100 MHz, single photons are generated over a single field mode with a nonclassical sub-Poissonian distribution. Adiabatic recycling within a multistep Franck-Condon molecular optical-pumping mechanism, characterized by quantum efficiency close to 1, implies a pump self-regularization process leading to a striking nnn-squeezing effect. Replicating the basic single-atom excitation process a beam of quantum photon ∣n〉|n〉∣n〉 states (Fock states) can be created. This represents a significant advance in the fields of basic quantum-mechanical investigation, quantum communication, and quantum cryptography.
We investigate the photon statistics of a single-photon source that operates under non-stationary conditions. The photons are emitted by shining a periodic sequence of laser pulses on single atoms falling randomly through a high-finesse optical cavity. Strong antibunching is found in the intensity correlation of the emitted light, demonstrating that a single atom emits photons one at a time. However, the number of atoms interacting with the cavity follows a Poissonian statistics so that, on average, no sub-Poissonian photon statistics is obtained, unless the measurement is conditioned on the presence of single atoms.