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International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks

Controlled rapid generation of single photons in an atom-cavity quantum composite

Kyungwon An

Published Jun 1, 2011• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this talk, the authors report realization of high-speed single photon generation on demand in a quantum composite of a single85Rb atom and a Fabry-Perot cavity mode. The key idea in our experiment is to optimize system parameters for high efficiency and repetition rate of single photon generation. For this, we employed cavity parameters for a moderate coupling regime instead of the strong coupling regime with the atom-cavity coupling, cavity decay rate and atom decay rate given as (g, K, γ)/2π = (7, 19, 3) MHz (all half widths), respectively. As a result, we could generate single photons with a high efficiency of 17% at a fast repetition rate up to 10 MHz. A figure of merit, defined as the product of the efficiency and the repetition rate, is 30 times higher than those of any previous experiments in the cavity-QED system.

DOI
10.1109/icton.2011.5970816

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In this talk, the authors report realization of high-speed single photon generation on demand in a quantum composite of a single85Rb atom and a Fabry-Perot cavity mode. The key idea in our experiment is to optimize system parameters for high efficiency and repetition rate of single photon generation. For this, we employed cavity parameters for a moderate coupling regime instead of the strong coupling regime with the atom-cavity coupling, cavity decay rate and atom decay rate given as (g, K, γ)/2π = (7, 19, 3) MHz (all half widths), respectively. As a result, we could generate single photons with a high efficiency of 17% at a fast repetition rate up to 10 MHz. A figure of merit, defined as the product of the efficiency and the repetition rate, is 30 times higher than those of any previous experiments in the cavity-QED system.
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.
The possibility of creating a scaleable quantum network by interconverting photonic and atomic qubits shows great promise. The fundamental requirement for such a network is deterministic control over the emission and absorption of photons from single atoms. This thesis reports on the experi-mental construction of a photon source that can emit single-photons with arbitrary spatio-temporal shape, phase, and frequency. The photon source itself is a strongly-coupled atom cavity system based on a single 87 Rb atom within a macroscopic high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavity. It operates intermittently for periods of up to 100µs, with single-photon repetition rates of 1.0 MHz and an efficiency of almost 80%. Atoms are loaded into the cavity using an atomic fountain, with the upper turning point near the centre of the cavity mode. This ensures long interaction times without any disturbances introduced by trapping potentials. The photons’ indistinguishability was tested, with a two-photon Hong-Ou-Mandel visibility of 87%. This ability to both generate, and control, the photons’ properties, for example producing photons with symmetric or multi-peaked spatio-temporal shapes, allows for the production of photons in an n-time-bin superposition state where each time-bin has an arbitrarily defined amplitude and phase. These photons can be used as photonic qubits, qutrits and qquads, and their properties have been tested using a small linear-optics network.
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.
We demonstrate a straightforward implementation of a push-button like single-photon source, which is based on a strongly coupled atom–cavity system. The device operates intermittently for periods of up to 100 μ s, with single-photon repetition rates of 1.0 MHz and an efficiency of 60%. Atoms are loaded into the cavity using an atomic fountain, with the upper turning point near the cavity's mode centre. This ensures long interaction times without any disturbances induced by trapping potentials. The latter is the key to reaching deterministic efficiencies as high as obtained in probabilistic photon-heralding schemes. The price to pay is the random loading of atoms into the cavity and the resulting intermittency. However, for all practical purposes, this has a negligible impact as an individual atom may emit up to 100 successive photons.