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Optics Letters

Nonclassical correlations between terahertz-bandwidth photons mediated by rotational quanta in hydrogen molecules

Philip J. Bustard, Jennifer Erskine, Duncan G. England, J. Nunn, Paul Hockett, Rune Lausten, Michael Spanner, Benjamin Sussman

Published Mar 3, 2015• 21 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum photonics offers much promise for the development of new technologies. The ability to control the interaction of light and matter at the level of single quantum excitations is a prerequisite for the construction of potentially powerful devices. Here we use the rotational levels of a room temperature ensemble of hydrogen molecules to couple two distinct optical modes at the single photon level using femtosecond pulses with 2 THz bandwidth. We observe photon correlations that violate a Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, thereby verifying the creation of a nonclassical state. This work demonstrates the rich potential of molecules for use in ultrafast quantum photonic devices.

DOI
10.1364/ol.40.000922

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Quantum photonics offers much promise for the development of new technologies. The ability to control the interaction of light and matter at the level of single quantum excitations is a prerequisite for the construction of potentially powerful devices. Here we use the rotational levels of a room temperature ensemble of hydrogen molecules to couple two distinct optical modes at the single photon level using femtosecond pulses with 2 THz bandwidth. We observe photon correlations that violate a Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, thereby verifying the creation of a nonclassical state. This work demonstrates the rich potential of molecules for use in ultrafast quantum photonic devices.
The unusual features of quantum mechanics are enabling the development of technologies not possible with classical physics. These devices utilize nonclassical phenomena in the states of atoms, ions, and solid-state media as the basis for many prototypes. Here we investigate molecular states as a distinct alternative. We demonstrate a memory for light based on storing photons in the vibrations of hydrogen molecules. The THz-bandwidth molecular memory is used to store 100-fs pulses for durations up to ~1 ns, enabling ~10(4) operational time bins. The results demonstrate the promise of molecules for constructing compact ultrafast quantum photonic technologies.
Abstract Nonclassical state is an essential resource for quantum-enhanced communication, computing and metrology to outperform their classical counterpart. The nonclassical states that can operate at high bandwidth and room temperature while being compatible with quantum memory are highly desirable to enable the scalability of quantum technologies. Here, we present a direct observation of broadband nonclasscal states in a room-temperature light–matter interface, where the atoms can also be controlled to store and interfere with photons. With a single coupling pulse and far off-resonance configuration, we are able to induce a multi-field interference between light and atoms to create the desired nonclassical states by spectrally selecting the two correlated photons out of seven possible emissions. We explicitly confirm the nonclassicality by observing a cross correlation up to 17 and a violation of Cauchy–Schwarz inequality with 568 standard deviations. Our results demonstrate the potential of a state-built-in, broadband and room-temperature light–matter interface for scalable quantum information networks.
We report experimental generation of nonclassically correlated photon pairs from collective emission in a room temperature atomic vapor cell. The nonclassical feature of the emission is demonstrated by observing a violation of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. Each pair of correlated photons are separated by a controllable time delay up to 2 microseconds. This experiment demonstrates an important step towards the realization of the Duan-Lukin-Cirac-Zoller scheme for scalable long-distance quantum communication.
The feasibility of generating correlated photon pairs at variable frequencies is investigated. For this purpose we consider the interaction of an off-resonant laser field with a two-level system possessing broken inversion symmetry. We show that the system generates nonclassical photon pairs exhibiting strong intensity-intensity correlations. The intensity of the applied laser tunes the degree of correlation while the detuning controls the frequency of one of the photons, which can be in the terahertz domain. Furthermore, we observe the violation of a Cauchy-Schwarz inequality characterizing these photons.
We report experimental generation of nonclassically correlated photon pairs from collective emission in a room-temperature atomic vapor cell. The nonclassical feature of the emission is demonstrated by observing a violation of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. Each pair of correlated photons is separated by a controllable time delay up to $2\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{s}$. This experiment demonstrates an important step towards the realization of the Duan-Lukin-Cirac-Zoller scheme for scalable long-distance quantum communication.
Single photons and single-photon pairs, inherently nonclassical in their nature, are fundamental elements of quantum sciences and technologies. Here, we propose to realize the nonclassical correlated deterministic photon pairs at the single-photon level for a single atom trapped in bimodal cavities. It is shown that the photon emissions for bimodal cavities exhibit a high single-photon purity and relatively large intracavity photon numbers, which are ascribed to the combination of optical Stark-shift enhanced energy-spectrum anharmonicity and quantum interference suppressed two-photon excitation. Our scheme generates photon-photon pairs with strong photon blockade for cavity modes via constructing a highly tunable cavity-enhanced deterministic parametric down-conversion process. Furthermore, we show that the cross-correlation function between the two cavity modes vastly violates the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality of the classical boundary, which unambiguously demonstrates the nonclassicality of the single-photon pairs. Our result reveals a prominent strategy to generate the high-quality two-mode single-photon sources with strong nonclassical correlation, which could provide versatile applications in distribution of quantum networks, long-distance quantum communication, and fundamental tests of quantum physics.