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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Strong coupling of a Rydberg superatom to a moving membrane

Alexander Carmele

Published Mar 16, 2015• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

We propose a scheme to achieve cavity-assisted strong coupling between the internal degrees of a Rydberg superatom to a moving membrane in the single photon and phonon limit. Our set-up allows for efficient transfer between electronic excitation and single phonons by combining the collective enhancement effect of the superatom Rabi frequency with typical cavity-optomechanics schemes in the strong coupling limit.

DOI
10.1117/12.2081880

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We propose a scheme to achieve cavity-assisted strong coupling between the internal degrees of a Rydberg superatom to a moving membrane in the single photon and phonon limit. Our set-up allows for efficient transfer between electronic excitation and single phonons by combining the collective enhancement effect of the superatom Rabi frequency with typical cavity-optomechanics schemes in the strong coupling limit.
We propose a hybrid optomechanical quantum system consisting of a moving membrane strongly coupled to an ensemble of N atoms with a Rydberg state. Due to the strong van-der-Waals interaction between the atoms, the ensemble forms an effective two-level system, a Rydberg superatom, with a collectively enhanced atom–light coupling. Using this superatom imposed collective enhancement strong coupling between membrane and superatom is feasible for parameters within the range of current experiments. The quantum interface to couple the membrane and the superatom can be a pumped single mode cavity, or a laser field in free space, where the Rydberg superatom and the membrane are spatially separated. In addition to the coherent dynamics, we study in detail the impact of the typical dissipation processes, in particular the radiative decay as a source for incoherent superpositions of atomic excitations. We identify the conditions to suppress these incoherent dynamics and thereby a parameter regime for strong coupling. The Rydberg superatom in this hybrid system serves as a toolbox for the nanomechanical resonator allowing for a wide range of applications such as state transfer, sympathetic cooling and non-classical state preparation. As an illustration, we show that a thermally occupied membrane can be prepared in a non-classical state without the necessity of ground state cooling.
We demonstrate a new approach for creating deterministic photon-photon interactions for optical quantum engineering, based on a single-ended medium-finesse optical cavity containing a mesoscopic atomic ensemble. This ensemble is made transparent by a laser beam mapping intracavity photons into Rydberg polaritons. The transparency vanishes when the cloud, acting as a single collective two-level "superatom" with an enhanced coupling to light, is driven from the ground to a Rydberg state. We observe collectively-enhanced Rabi oscillations between these states, optically discriminate them in a single shot with a 95% effciency, and show that a change between the two internal states of the superatom induces a π phase rotation on the light reflected off of the cavity. These ingredients form a complete set of tools for implementing deterministic photonic entangling gates and for generating highly non-classical light without the need for a low-volume high-finesse cavity.
Abstract Quantum optics based on highly excited atoms, also known as Rydberg atoms, has cemented itself as a powerful platform for the manipulation of light at the few-photon level. The Rydberg blockade, resulting from the strong interaction between individual Rydberg atoms, can turn a large ensemble of atoms into a system which collectively resembles a single two-level emitter, a so-called Rydberg superatom. The coupling of this artificial emitter to a driving photonic mode is collectively enhanced by Rydberg interactions, enabling strong coherent coupling at the few-photon level in free-space. The exquisite level of control achievable through this has already demonstrated its utility in applications of quantum computing and information processing. Here, we review the derivation of the collective coupling between a Rydberg superatom and a single light mode and discuss the similarity of this free-space setup to waveguide quantum electrodynamics systems of quantum emitters coupled to photonic waveguides. We also briefly review applications of Rydberg superatoms to quantum optics such as single-photon generation and single-photon subtraction.
We investigate a hybrid quantum system that consists of a superatom coupled to a surface phonon-polariton. We apply this hybrid quantum system to subtract individual photons from a beam of light. Rydberg atom blockade is used to attain absorption of a single photon by an atomic microtrap. Surface phonon-polariton coupling to the superatom then triggers the transfer of the excitation to a storage state, a single Rydberg atom. The approach utilizes the interaction between a superatom and a Markovian bath that acts as a controlled decoherence mechanism to irreversibly project the superatom state into a single Rydberg atom state that can be read out.
We investigate a hybrid quantum system that consists of a superatom coupled to a surface phonon-polariton. We apply this hybrid quantum system to subtract individual photons from a beam of light. A Rydberg atom blockade is used to attain absorption of a single photon by an atomic microtrap. Surface phonon-polariton coupling to the superatom then triggers the transfer of the excitation to a storage state, a single Rydberg atom. The approach utilizes the interaction between a superatom and a Markovian bath that acts as a controlled decoherence mechanism to irreversibly project the superatom state into a single Rydberg atom state that can be read out.
A major trend within the field of cavity QED is to boost the interaction strength between the cavity field and the atomic internal degrees of freedom of the trapped atom by decreasing the mode volume of the cavity. In such systems, it is natural to achieve strong atom-cavity coupling, where the coherent interaction strength exceeds the cavity linewidth, while the linewidth exceeds the atomic trap frequency. While most work focuses on coupling of photons to the internal degrees of freedom, additional rich dynamics can occur by considering the atomic motional degree of freedom as well. In particular, we show that such a system is a natural candidate to explore an interesting regime of quantum optomechanics, where the zero-point atomic motion yields a cavity frequency shift larger than its linewidth (so-called single-photon optomechanical strong coupling), but simultaneously where the motional frequency cannot be resolved by the cavity. We show that this regime can result in a number of remarkable phenomena, such as strong entanglement between the atomic wave function and the scattering properties of single incident photons, or an anomalous mechanism where the atomic motion can significantly heat up due to single-photon scattering, even if the atom is trapped tightly within the Lamb-Dicke limit.