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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics

Controlled single-photon emission from a strongly coupled atom-cavity system

Axel Kuhn, Markus Hennrich, Thomas Legero, Gerhard Rempe

Published Aug 29, 2005• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Summary form only given. In quantum information processing, a qubit is realised as a superposition of atomic or ionic eigenstates, or as a superposition of the states of a photon. A coupling between these different types of qubits is necessary to perform quantum operations or quantum transmissions, e.g. in a quantum network where single atoms or ions are entangled with individual photons. To generate such an entanglement in a controlled way, a triggered source for single photons, a photon pistol, will be needed. Our scheme will lead to the emission of one photon into a single, predetermined mode of the radiation field in response to a trigger event. This photon is emitted from an atom strongly coupled to a high-finesse optical cavity, and the trigger is a classical light pulse. The device combines cavity-QED with an adiabatic transfer technique. We consider a single lambda-type three-level atom being placed inside an empty cavity.

DOI
10.1109/iqec.2000.908067

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Summary form only given. In quantum information processing, a qubit is realised as a superposition of atomic or ionic eigenstates, or as a superposition of the states of a photon. A coupling between these different types of qubits is necessary to perform quantum operations or quantum transmissions, e.g. in a quantum network where single atoms or ions are entangled with individual photons. To generate such an entanglement in a controlled way, a triggered source for single photons, a photon pistol, will be needed. Our scheme will lead to the emission of one photon into a single, predetermined mode of the radiation field in response to a trigger event. This photon is emitted from an atom strongly coupled to a high-finesse optical cavity, and the trigger is a classical light pulse. The device combines cavity-QED with an adiabatic transfer technique. We consider a single lambda-type three-level atom being placed inside an empty cavity.
By using the double-lambda configuration of energy levels and three classical fields, an atom or ion in a high-Q resonant cavity can be manipulated to create a single-mode quantum state in the cavity that is an arbitrary combination of Fock states for that mode.The same principles of operation can be applied to a cavity with much lower Q in order to produce a "photon pistol", a device that "shoots" one and only one photon when a trigger is pulled, and emits no photons at other times.
The paper reports on the experimental demonstration of elementary quantum-network links and nodes with narrowband and transform-limited single-photon pulses that cannot be distinguished from one another. The photon source is realized in form of a strongly coupled atom-cavity system and it employs a controlled energy exchange between the atom and the quantized light field of the cavity. This is accomplished by laser pulses adiabatically driving one branch of a Raman transition in a /spl Lambda/-type three-level atom, which is located in a high-finesse optical cavity resonant with the other branch of the transition. The transition goes hand-in-hand with a change of the photon number in the cavity.
A sequence of single photons is emitted on demand from a single three-level atom strongly coupled to a high-finesse optical cavity. The photons are generated by an adiabatically driven stimulated Raman transition between two atomic ground states, with the vacuum field of the cavity stimulating one branch of the transition, and laser pulses deterministically driving the other branch. This process is unitary and therefore intrinsically reversible, which is essential for quantum communication and networking, and the photons should be appropriate for all-optical quantum information processing.
Dynamic coupling of cavities to a quantum network is of major interest to distributed quantum information processing schemes based on cavity quantum electrodynamics. This can be achieved by actively tuning a mediating atom-cavity system. In particular, we consider the dynamic coupling between two coupled cavities, each interacting with a two-level atom, realized by tuning one of the atoms. One atom-field system can be controlled to become maximally and minimally coupled with its counterpart, allowing high fidelity excitation confinement, QQQ switching, and reversible state transport. As an application, we first show that simple tuning can lead to emission of near-Gaussian single-photon pulses that is significantly different from the usual exponential decay in a passive cavity-based system. The influences of cavity loss and atomic spontaneous emission are studied in detailed numerical simulations, showing the practicality of these schemes within the reach of current experimental solid-state technology. We then show that when the technique is employed to an extended coupled-cavity scheme involving a multilevel atom, arbitrary temporal superposition of single photons can be engineered in a deterministic way.
A single atom strongly coupled to a high-finesse optical-cavity is a versatile tool for quantum information processing. Utilized as a single-photon source, it allows one to generate single photons very efficiently in a well defined spatio-temporal mode. In a first experiment, polarization-control over the photons is shown. A time-resolved two-photon interference experiment proves the indistinguishability of these photons - required in various quantum information processing schemes. Moreover, in a second experiment, entanglement between the polarization of the emitted photon and the population of the atomic Zeeman levels is created. Subsequent state mapping of the atomic state onto another photon results in a pair of polarization-entangled photons emitted one after the other from the cavity. Although these schemes are in principle possible in free space, the cavity boosts the efficiency by several orders of magnitude.
Summary form only given. Many attempts to realize elementary quantum-logic gates as well as the feasible schemes for quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation are based on the availability of a single photon in a well defined mode of the radiation field. However, most employed schemes used for photon generation rely on spontaneous processes or on parametric down conversion and produce photons at more or less random times. Only recently, different photon generation schemes have been demonstrated, like a single-photon turnstile device, based on the Coulomb blockade mechanism in a quantum dot, the fluorescence excitation of a single molecule or the excitation of single colour centers or quantum dots. All these new schemes emit photons upon an external trigger event. However, the photons are spontaneously emitted into many modes of the radiation field and usually show a broad energy distribution. In contrast to these, our scheme leads to a photon emission into a single mode of the electromagnetic field of a high-Q optical cavity.