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Scientia Sinica Informationis

宣布式可控波形单光子的产生和应用

Hui Yan, ShiLiang ZHU, Kai-Yu Liao, JunYu HE

Published Mar 1, 2014• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Manipulation of the temporal waveform of single photons not only provides a powerful benchmark tool for fundamental research in quantum physics, but also plays a critical role in quantum information processing. The generation of narrowband paired photons makes it possible for manipulating the temporal waveform of single photons. At first, we reviewed the generation of narrowband photon pairs through four wave mixing and slow light with high optical depth cold atoms. Secondly, we reviewed the generation and manipulation of the heralded narrowband single photons with controllable waveforms. Thirdly, we reviewed the application of the heralded narrowband single photons: (1) single photon precursor; (2) the coherent interaction between the heralded narrowband single photon and two energy level atoms; (3) DPS quantum key distribution with the heralded narrowband single photons.

DOI
10.1360/n112013-00102

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Manipulation of the temporal waveform of single photons not only provides a powerful benchmark tool for fundamental research in quantum physics, but also plays a critical role in quantum information processing. The generation of narrowband paired photons makes it possible for manipulating the temporal waveform of single photons. At first, we reviewed the generation of narrowband photon pairs through four wave mixing and slow light with high optical depth cold atoms. Secondly, we reviewed the generation and manipulation of the heralded narrowband single photons with controllable waveforms. Thirdly, we reviewed the application of the heralded narrowband single photons: (1) single photon precursor; (2) the coherent interaction between the heralded narrowband single photon and two energy level atoms; (3) DPS quantum key distribution with the heralded narrowband single photons.
The generation of nonclassical photon pairs with a long coherence time is key for applications that range from fundamental to quantum communication and metrology. Spontaneous four-wave mixing with electromagnetically induced transparency has been demonstrated as one of the most efficient methods; however, narrowing the bandwidth and producing photon pairs with a temporal length beyond 1 μs remains a technical challenge due to noise considerations and the need for cold atoms with a high optical depth (OD). In this work, we demonstrate the generation of narrowband photon pairs with a controllable coherence time up to 1.72 μs in a laser-cooled atomic ensemble with an OD as high as 130. At such a high OD, we find that the pump laser field spatial profile has a significant effect on the time–frequency entangled two-photon waveform. We also confirm the quantum particle nature of heralded narrowband single photons generated from this source.
In this article, we review on narrowband photon pairs produced in nonlinear crystals, and especially in atomic ensembles. In atomic ensembles, “write-read” process in pulse mode and spontaneous four-wave mixing process (SFWM) in continuous mode are two popular photon pair generation schemes. We specifically discuss the experimental works with continuous SFWM scheme in cold atomic ensembles. Photon pairs produced in these systems are characteristic of controllable long coherence time, and therefore are accessible with direct temporal modulation. We elaborate on the recent techniques on modulation and waveform reshaping of narrow-band paired photons.
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Exploring coherent photon-atom interaction at quantum level has become more and more important in modern quantum physics and quantum information science. In this PhD thesis research work, we established two cold 85Rb atoms ensemble in 2-dimensional dark-line magneto-optical trap with OD more than 100 and produced long coherence time (~1us) heralded single photons via spontaneous four-wave-mixing process with full temporal waveform control from one of the cold atomic ensemble. With this system, optical precursor of a single photon was observed for the first time, which verifies that information carried by a single photon cannot be transferred faster than light speed in vacuum even in the quantum world. This closed the longtime debate on the true speed of the information carried by a single photon. Single photon reemission timing in a two-level atomic system was the first time been controlled on-demand. With this technique, the quantum timing order of the single photon absorption and reemission was first directly observed in time domain. This technique can also be further used in the field of efficient single atom excitation that is desired for the quantum network. Finally, a series of work were conducted to improve the quantum optical memory efficiency in cold atomic ensemble. We obtained the highest single-photon storage efficiency of about 50%, which brings the quantum light-matter interface closer to practical quantum information applications. Multi-bin and multi-channel optical memory were also exploited in the following work.