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IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics

Switching and Counting With Atomic Vapors in Photonic-Crystal Fibers

Thibault Peyronel, Michal Bajcsy, Sebastian Hofferberth, Vlatko Balić, Mohammad Hafezi, Qiyu Liang, Alexander S. Zibrov, Vladan Vuletić, Mikhail D. Lukin

Published Apr 27, 2012• 11 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We review our recent experiments demonstrating a hollow-core photonic-crystal fiber loaded with laser-cooled atomic vapor as a system for all-optical switching with pulses containing few hundred photons. Additionally, we discuss the outlooks for improving the efficiency of this switching scheme and present preliminary results geared toward using the system as a photon-number resolving detector.

DOI
10.1109/jstqe.2012.2196414

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We review our recent experiments demonstrating a hollow-core photonic-crystal fiber loaded with laser-cooled atomic vapor as a system for all-optical switching with pulses containing few hundred photons. Additionally, we discuss the outlooks for improving the efficiency of this switching scheme and present preliminary results geared toward using the system as a photon-number resolving detector.
Cold atoms confined inside a hollow-core photonic-crystal fiber with core diameters of a few photon wavelengths are a promising medium for studying nonlinear optical interactions at extremely low light levels. The high electric field intensity per photon and interaction lengths not limited by diffraction are some of the unique features of this system. Here, we present the results of our first nonlinear optics experiments in this system including a demonstration of an all-optical switch that is activated at energies corresponding to few hundred optical photons per pulse.
We describe the loading of laser-cooled rubidium atoms into a single-mode hollow-core photonic-crystal fiber. Inside the fiber, the atoms are confined by a far-detuned optical trap and probed by a weak resonant beam. We describe different loading methods and compare their trade-offs in terms of implementation complexity and atom-loading efficiency. The most efficient procedure results in loading of  30~30 30,000 rubidium atoms, which creates a medium with an optical depth of  180~180 180 inside the fiber. Compared to our earlier study [1] this represents a sixfold increase in the maximum achieved optical depth in this system.