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Science

Deterministic Generation of Single Photons from One Atom Trapped in a Cavity

J. McKeever, Andreea Boca, A. David. Boozer, Ryan Miller, J. R. Buck, A. Kuzmich, Harry J. Kimble

Published Mar 1, 2004• 694 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A single cesium atom trapped within the mode of an optical cavity is used to generate single photons on demand. The photon wave packets are emitted as a Gaussian beam with temporal profile and repetition rate controlled by external driving fields. Each generation attempt is inferred to succeed with a probability near unity, whereas the efficiency for creating an unpolarized photon in the total cavity output is 0.69 +/- 0.10, as limited by passive cavity losses. An average of 1.4 x 10(4) photons are produced by each trapped atom. These results constitute an important step in quantum information science, for example, toward the realization of distributed quantum networking.

DOI
10.1126/science.1095232

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A single cesium atom trapped within the mode of an optical cavity is used to generate single photons on demand. The photon wave packets are emitted as a Gaussian beam with temporal profile and repetition rate controlled by external driving fields. Each generation attempt is inferred to succeed with a probability near unity, whereas the efficiency for creating an unpolarized photon in the total cavity output is 0.69 +/- 0.10, as limited by passive cavity losses. An average of 1.4 x 10(4) photons are produced by each trapped atom. These results constitute an important step in quantum information science, for example, toward the realization of distributed quantum networking.
A single rubidium atom trapped within a high-finesse optical cavity is an efficient source of single photons. We theoretically and experimentally study single-photon generation using a vacuum stimulated Raman adiabatic passage. We experimentally achieve photon generation efficiencies of up to 34% and 56% on the D1{D}_{1}D1​ and D2{D}_{2}D2​ line, respectively. Output coupling with 89% results in record-high efficiencies for single photons in one spatiotemporally well-defined propagating mode. We demonstrate that the observed generation efficiencies are constant in a wide range of applied pump laser powers and virtual level detunings. This allows for independent control over the frequency and wave packet envelope of the photons without loss in efficiency. In combination with the long trapping time of the atom in the cavity, our system constitutes a significant advancement toward an on-demand, highly efficient single-photon source for quantum information processing tasks.
A sequence of single photons is emitted on demand from a single three-level atom strongly coupled to a high-finesse optical cavity. The photons are generated by an adiabatically driven stimulated Raman transition between two atomic ground states, with the vacuum field of the cavity stimulating one branch of the transition, and laser pulses deterministically driving the other branch. This process is unitary and therefore intrinsically reversible, which is essential for quantum communication and networking, and the photons should be appropriate for all-optical quantum information processing.
We present a mechanism to produce indistinguishable single-photon pulses on demand from an optical cavity. The sequences of two laser pulses generate, at the two Raman transitions of a four-level atom, the same cavity-mode photons without repumping of the atom between photon generations. Photons are emitted from the cavity with near-unit efficiency in well-defined temporal modes of identical shapes controlled by the laser fields. The second-order correlation function reveals the single-photon nature of the proposed source. A realistic setup for the experimental implementation is presented.
Applications in quantum information and quantum cryptography require radiation sources capable of producing photons in a deterministic way. This paper reviews experiments using cavity quantum electrodynamics directed towards this aim and performed in our laboratory. Two methods will be described. One uses the one-atom maser, and the other, trapped ions in an optical cavity. In order to generate photons on demand, the one-atom maser operates under the condition of the so-called trapping states. In this situation the field of the micromaser stabilizes to photon number states. Thus, the quantum states of the radiation field become directly visible. Hence, the one-atom maser is the only experiment to show a spectrum of photon quantum states. In the second experiment, the strong localization and position control achievable in an ion trap is combined with an optical cavity in a cavity quantum electrodynamic experiment leading to a big step forward towards a deterministic photon source in the visible spectral region.
We have demonstrated high-speed controlled generation of single photons in a coupled atom-cavity system. A single 85Rb atom, pumped with a nanosecond-pulse laser, generates a single photon into the cavity mode, and the photon is then emitted out the cavity rapidly. By employing cavity parameters for a moderate coupling regime, the single-photon emission process was optimized for both high efficiency and fast bit rates up to 10 MHz. The temporal single-photon wave packet was studied by means of the photon-arrival-time distribution relative to the pump pulse and the efficiency of the single-photon generation was investigated as the pump power. The single-photon nature of the emission was confirmed by the second-order correlation of emitted photons.