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Nature Communications

Coherent manipulation of a solid-state artificial atom with few photons

Valérian Giesz, Niccolò Somaschi, Gaston Hornecker, Thomas Grange, B. Reznychenko, Lorenzo De Santis, Justin Demory, C. Gómez, Isabelle Sagnes, Aristide Lemaître, O. Krebs, Norberto Daniel Lanzillotti-Kimura, L. Lanco, Alexia Auffèves, P. Senellart

Published Jun 17, 2016• 79 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In a quantum network based on atoms and photons, a single atom should control the photon state and, reciprocally, a single photon should allow the coherent manipulation of the atom. Both operations require controlling the atom environment and developing efficient atom-photon interfaces, for instance by coupling the natural or artificial atom to cavities. So far, much attention has been drown on manipulating the light field with atomic transitions, recently at the few-photon limit. Here we report on the reciprocal operation and demonstrate the coherent manipulation of an artificial atom by few photons. We study a quantum dot-cavity system with a record cooperativity of 13. Incident photons interact with the atom with probability 0.95, which radiates back in the cavity mode with probability 0.96. Inversion of the atomic transition is achieved for 3.8 photons on average, showing that our artificial atom performs as if fully isolated from the solid-state environment.

DOI
10.1038/ncomms11986

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•Oct 8, 2013•0 citations
In a quantum network based on atoms and photons, a single atom should control the photon state and, reciprocally, a single photon should allow the coherent manipulation of the atom. Both operations require controlling the atom environment and developing efficient atom-photon interfaces, for instance by coupling the natural or artificial atom to cavities. So far, much attention has been drown on manipulating the light field with atomic transitions, recently at the few-photon limit. Here we report on the reciprocal operation and demonstrate the coherent manipulation of an artificial atom by few photons. We study a quantum dot-cavity system with a record cooperativity of 13. Incident photons interact with the atom with probability 0.95, which radiates back in the cavity mode with probability 0.96. Inversion of the atomic transition is achieved for 3.8 photons on average, showing that our artificial atom performs as if fully isolated from the solid-state environment.
Single photons are the natural link between the nodes of a quantum network: they coherently propagate and interact with many types of quantum bits including natural and artificial atoms. Ideally, one atom should deterministically control the state of a photon and vice-versa. The interaction between free space photons and an atom is however intrinsically weak and many efforts have been dedicated to develop an efficient interface. Recently, it was shown that the propagation of light can be controlled by an atomic resonance coupled to a cavity or a single mode waveguide. Here we demonstrate that the state of a single artificial atom in a cavity can be efficiently controlled by a few-photon pulse. We study a quantum dot optimally coupled to an electrically-controlled cavity device, acting as a near optimal one-dimensional atom. By monitoring the exciton population through resonant fluorescence, we demonstrate Rabi oscillations with a πππ-pulse of only 3.8 photons on average. The probability to flip the exciton quantum bit with a single photon Fock state is calculated to reach 55% in the same device.
Generating strong interactions between single quanta of light and matter is central to quantum information science, and a key component of quantum computers and long-distance quantum networks. In quantum information processing, these interactions are required to create elementary logic operations (quantum gates) between stationary matter quantum bits (qubits) and photonic qubits that can be transmitted over long distances. Efficient quantum gates between photonic and matter qubits are a crucial enabler for a broad range of applications that include robust quantum networks, nondestructive quantum measurements, and strong photon-photon interactions. So far these qubit-photon gates have been achieved using single atoms and at microwave frequencies in circuit QED systems. Their implementation with solidstate quantum emitters, however, has remained a difficult challenge. We demonstrate that the qubit state of a photon can be controlled by a single solid-state qubit composed of a quantum dot (QD) strongly coupled to an optical nanocavity. We show that the QD acts as a coherently controllable qubit system that conditionally flips the polarization of a photon reflected from the cavity mode on picosecond timescales. This operation implements a controlled NOT (cNOT) logic gate between the QD and the incident photon, which is a universal quantum operation that can serve as a general light-matter interface for remote entanglements and quantum computations. Our results represent an important step towards an all solid-state implementation of quantum networks and quantum computers, and provide a versatile approach for controlling and probing interactions between a photon and a single quantum emitter on ultra-fast timescales.
Starting from the semiclassical theory of light–matter interaction, we have theoretically investigated the substantial influences of two coherent driving fields on manipulating the single-photon transmission probability in the extensively studied atom-cavity-waveguide coupled system. The results strictly demonstrate that under the relatively large photon-cavity detuning and moderately strong driving fields, the single-photon transmission probability increases remarkably from the original 0 to 1 by controlling the coherent fields in the nondissipative environment, which manifests the manipulation of the coherent fields as a sort of highly controllable external tool to efficiently act as an experimentally available all-optical quantum switching. In contrast, the behavior independent from variation of coherent fields and characterized by the stationary transmission spectrum appears under the photon-atom on-resonance condition. Similar properties can also be observed in the dissipative environment. These distinct characteristics essentially reveal some significant functionalities of coherent field control in influencing the single-photon transmission spectrum, which may have potential applications in designing efficient photonic devices.
Single-photon sources that emit photons at the same energy play a key role in the emerging concepts of quantum information, such as entanglement swapping, quantum teleportation and quantum networks. They can be realized in a variety of systems, where semiconductor quantum dots, or 'artificial atoms', are arguably among the most attractive. However, unlike 'natural atoms', no two artificial atoms are alike. This peculiarity is a serious hurdle for quantum information applications that require photonic quantum states with identical energies. Here we demonstrate a single artificial atom that generates photons with an absolute energy that is locked to an optical transition in a natural atom. Furthermore, we show that our system is robust and immune to drifts and fluctuations in the environment of the emitter. Our demonstration is crucial for realization of a large number of universally-indistinguishable solid-state systems at arbitrary remote locations, where frequency-locked artificial atoms might become fundamental ingredients.
Controlling light photon-by-photon is central to quantum optics. At a fundamental level, photon interactions are mediated by their coupling to atoms, and ultimate control requires deterministic light-matter interfacing of single photons to single atoms. Extending this paradigm to radiatively couple multiple individual atoms in a deterministic and scalable manner opens the arena of many-body quantum optics. Here, we realize such a setting by coherently coupling solid-state artificial atoms to a nanophotonic waveguide and demonstrate higher-order photon correlations that are controlled by the number of quantum emitters. We study the scaling of nonlinear photonic transport induced by emitter-photon scattering and demonstrate that adding a quantum emitter generates higher-order photon correlations. Specifically, we experimentally observe genuine three-photon correlations from a pair of collectively coupled emitters, while contributions from lower photon numbers are suppressed. In addition, we scale to three resonant quantum emitters coupled to the waveguide. These advancements demonstrate the onset of many-body quantum optics in waveguide quantum electrodynamics, enabling new photonic quantum simulators, the creation of many-body entangled states, and the exploration of novel quantum phase transitions.
Single spins confined in semiconductor quantum dots - artificial atoms in the solid-state - are attractive candidates for quantum mechanical bits, the fundamental units and building blocks of a quantum computer. The ability to address quantum dot spins optically allows us to initialise and manipulate the state of the quantum bit. Gaining information on the qubit, for example by reading out its state, not only requires state-selective optical excitation, but also access to the single photons scattered in response by the quantum dot. Further, for a distributed computer architecture where nodes of few quantum bits are interlinked via optical communication channels photonic quantum bits are required to faithfully transmit the quantum information. In this thesis we advocate resonant excitation of quantum dot transitions and collection of the resonance fluorescence to address two outstanding challenges: generating dephasing-free single photons for use as flying quantum bits and single-shot spin readout. To this end we investigate the spectral and first-order coherence properties of quantum dot resonance fluorescence. In particular, we directly observe highly coherent scattering in the low Rabi frequency limit which has remained unexplored for solid-state single photon emitters so far. At the same time, interactions with the semiconductor environment are revealed and quantified through their optical signatures: exciton-phonon coupling, nuclear spin dynamics and local electric field fluctuations signal a departure from the ideal atom-like behaviour. Taking advantage of the laser-like coherence of single phase-locked quantum dot photons in the Heitler regime, we demonstrate near-ideal two-photon quantum interference. This benchmark measurement is a precursor for the photonic entanglement of distant quantum dot spins in a quantum optical network, and the results here predict a high fidelity operation. Finally, moving to tunnel-coupled quantum dot molecules we show that the overlap of carrier wave functions in two closely spaced quantum dots forms new spin-selective optical transitions not available in single quantum dots. Then, the presence or absence of scattered photons reveals the electron spin. Intermittency in the quantum dot resonance fluorescence allowed us, for the first time, to observe spin quantum jumps in real-time. Both achievements - highly coherent photons and spin readout - provide the missing link to attempt creation of a small-scale quantum network now.