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Physical Review A

Low-light-level all-optical switching based on stored light pulses

Wei-Hsun Lin, Wen-Te Liao, Chang-Yi Wang, Yen-Feng Lee, Ite A. Yu

Published Sep 8, 2008• 11 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We have experimentally and theoretically studied the scheme of all-optical switching based on stored light pulses. In the scheme, a probe pulse is stored in the medium by the effect of electromagnetically induced transparency and a switching pulse is applied during the storage in order to turn off the probe transmission in the retrieval process. Our study takes into account the attenuation of the switching pulse induced by the stored probe pulse. The consistency between the experimental data and the theoretical predictions from the numerical calculation is satisfactory. We further derive the analytical expressions of energy losses of the probe and switching pulses. The results from the analytical expressions are in good agreement with those from the numerical calculation. Using the analytical expressions, we investigated the switching efficiency with the consideration of the Gaussian beam profile of the photon pulses and explored the feasibility of switching a single photon by another.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.78.033807

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We have experimentally and theoretically studied the scheme of all-optical switching based on stored light pulses. In the scheme, a probe pulse is stored in the medium by the effect of electromagnetically induced transparency and a switching pulse is applied during the storage in order to turn off the probe transmission in the retrieval process. Our study takes into account the attenuation of the switching pulse induced by the stored probe pulse. The consistency between the experimental data and the theoretical predictions from the numerical calculation is satisfactory. We further derive the analytical expressions of energy losses of the probe and switching pulses. The results from the analytical expressions are in good agreement with those from the numerical calculation. Using the analytical expressions, we investigated the switching efficiency with the consideration of the Gaussian beam profile of the photon pulses and explored the feasibility of switching a single photon by another.
All-optical switching is a technique in which a gate light pulse changes the transmission of a target light pulse without the detour via electronic signal processing. We take this to the quantum regime, where the incoming gate light pulse contains only one photon on average. The gate pulse is stored as a Rydberg excitation in an ultracold atomic gas using electromagnetically induced transparency. Rydberg blockade suppresses the transmission of the subsequent target pulse. Finally, the stored gate photon can be retrieved. A retrieved photon heralds successful storage. The corresponding postselected subensemble shows an extinction of 0.05. The single-photon switch offers many interesting perspectives ranging from quantum communication to quantum information processing.
We propose an all-optical switch that utilizes the technique of storage and retrieval of light pulses. A single photon (probe pulse) switched by another (switching pulse) is feasible, and the on-off ratio can be as large as 10 dB. We have experimentally demonstrated that the energy of the retrieved probe pulse is reduced to about 10% because of the presence of a switching pulse with an energy per unit area of one photon per lambda(2)/(2pi). The achieved result does not depend on the coupling intensity, the atomic optical density, or the width and shape of the switching pulse.
We consider storage and retrieval of light based on electromagnetically induced transparency in an atomic medium using nonadiabatic switching of a control field. We derive various conditions for writing (and reading) the light information to (and from) the atomic coherence. We obtain an analytical solution for the retrieval of the stored pulse that is in excellent agreement with the full numerical results. We identify the origin of distortion at the output and derive a condition to correct the distortions by manipulating the retrieval process.
This study reports the first experimental demonstration that two light pulses were made motionless and interacted with each other through a medium. The scheme with motionless light pulses maximizes the interaction time and can achieve a considerable efficiency even below single-photon level. To demonstrate the enhancement of optical nonlinear efficiency, the experiment in this study used the process of one optical pulse switched by another based on the effect of electromagnetically induced transparency. Moving light pulses activate switching at an energy per area of 2 photons per atomic absorption cross section as discussed in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 4611 (1999)]. This study demonstrates that motionless light pulses can activate switching at 0.56 photons per atomic absorption cross section, and that the light level can be further reduced by increasing the optical density of the medium. The result of this work enters a new regime of low-light physics.
The realization of an all-optical transistor, in which one "gate" photon controls a "source" light beam, is a long-standing goal in optics. By stopping a light pulse in an atomic ensemble contained inside an optical resonator, we realized a device in which one stored gate photon controls the resonator transmission of subsequently applied source photons. A weak gate pulse induces bimodal transmission distribution, corresponding to zero and one gate photons. One stored gate photon produces fivefold source attenuation and can be retrieved from the atomic ensemble after switching more than one source photon. Without retrieval, one stored gate photon can switch several hundred source photons. With improved storage and retrieval efficiency, our work may enable various new applications, including photonic quantum gates and deterministic multiphoton entanglement.