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Frontiers in Optics

Nondestructive Detection of Traveling Optical Photons in Real Time

Mahdi Hosseini, Kristin M. Beck, Yiheng Duan, Wenlan Chen, Vladan Vuletić

Published Jan 1, 2015• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We nondestructively observe individual optical photons (signal photons) in real time as they propagate through a slow-light medium. The nondestructive measurement is accomplished with another light beam that detects the atomic-excitation component of the slow signal photons.
DOI
10.1364/fio.2015.fw4d.5

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Deterministic photon-photon interactions are a long-standing goal in optical science. Using an atomic ensemble inside a cavity, we demonstrate the mutual cross modulation of two continuous light beams at the level of individual photons. The originally uncorrelated beams derived from independent lasers become anticorrelated, as evidenced by an equal-time cross-correlation function g^{(2)}=0.89(1), showing that one photon in one beam extinguishes a photon in the other beam with a probability of 11(1)%. With further technical improvements, our approach should enable the nondestructive continuous detection of traveling optical photons.