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Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Unidirectional single-photon generation via matched zero-index metamaterials

Jingping Xu, Ge Song, Zhenqing Zhang, Yaping Yang, Hong Chen, Muhammad Suhail Zubairy, Shi‐Yao Zhu

Published Dec 8, 2016• 17 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We propose a scheme which can generate a highly directional single photon with almost 100% efficiency. Therefore we can get a useful single photon when it is required. An initial excited atom is placed inside a special Fabry-P\'erot cavity whose walls consist of left-handed and zero-index metamaterials. The left-handed slabs work as a closed shell to avoid dissipation of the emitted photon, while the outer zero-index metamaterial slabs act as a special shutter which is transparent only for normal incidence, so that the photon emitted by the atom can only escape out of the cavity unidirectionally. Furthermore, we design the cavity with currently available metamaterials made of two-dimensional dielectric photonic crystals, and simulate the radiative field of an electric dipole to confirm our prediction. Differently from the previous proposal of single-photon sources which demanded complicated structure design and subtle mode analysis, our scheme is simple and robust for atomic position. This work has promising applications for quantum communication and optical quantum computing.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.94.220103

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We propose a scheme which can generate a highly directional single photon with almost 100% efficiency. Therefore we can get a useful single photon when it is required. An initial excited atom is placed inside a special Fabry-P'erot cavity whose walls consist of left-handed and zero-index metamaterials. The left-handed slabs work as a closed shell to avoid dissipation of the emitted photon, while the outer zero-index metamaterial slabs act as a special shutter which is transparent only for normal incidence, so that the photon emitted by the atom can only escape out of the cavity unidirectionally. Furthermore, we design the cavity with currently available metamaterials made of two-dimensional dielectric photonic crystals, and simulate the radiative field of an electric dipole to confirm our prediction. Differently from the previous proposal of single-photon sources which demanded complicated structure design and subtle mode analysis, our scheme is simple and robust for atomic position. This work has promising applications for quantum communication and optical quantum computing.
Solid-state sources capable of emitting single photons on demand are of great interest in quantum information applications. Ideally, such a source should emit exactly one photon into the collection optics per trigger, the emitted photons should be indistinguishable, and the source should be electrically driven. Several design strategies addressing these requirements have been proposed. In the cavity-based source, light emission is controlled using resonant cavity quantum electrodynamics effects, whereas in the waveguide-based source, broadband electric field screening effects are employed to direct the light emission into the optical mode of interest. For all the strategies, accurate modeling and careful optical engineering is required to achieve high performance. In this study, we discuss the models and numerical techniques used to analyze such structures. The physical effects governing the light emission profile and the possibilities of tailoring it as well as the mechanisms governing the coherence are elucidated. The major design strategies pursued to optimize the single-photon source performance and the remaining challenges are reviewed.
We propose a scheme for generating a high-purity single photon on the basis of cavity QED. This scheme employs an atom as a four-level system and the structure allows the suppression of the reexcitation process due to the atomic decay, which is known to significantly degrade the single-photon purity in state-of-the-art photon sources using a three-level system. Our analysis shows that the reexcitation probability arbitrarily approaches zero without sacrificing the photon generation probability when increasing the power of a driving laser between two excited states. This advantage is achievable by using current cavity-QED technologies. Our scheme can contribute to developing distributed quantum computation or quantum communication with high accuracy.
We show how to achieve single-photon control via a synthesized optical magnetic response without metamaterials, using quantum-mechanical electric dipole transitions of naturally occurring atoms. We demonstrate how arrays of atoms can be designed to absorb, store, and emit single photons and realize a quantum atomic Huygens' surface that allows for extreme wavefront engineering. The response can be further controlled by the quantum state of an optical cavity, generating entanglement between the cavity and the array, and hence the cavity and transmitted light.
Solid-state sources capable of emitting single photons on demand are of great interest in quantum information applications. Ideally, such a source should emit exactly one photon into the collection optics per trigger, the emitted photons should be indistinguishable and the source should be electrically driven. Several design strategies addressing these requirements have been proposed. In the cavity-based source, light emission is controlled using resonant cavity quantum electrodynamics effects, whereas in the waveguide-based source, broadband electric field screening effects are employed to direct the light emission into the optical mode of interest. For all the strategies, accurate modeling and careful optical engineering is required to achieve high performance.
) crystal to realize a new scalable, ultrathin, and efficient SPDC source. By coinciding fundamental and higher order resonances of the metasurface with the generated signal and idler frequencies, respectively, the electric field in the nonlinear media is significantly boosted. This leads to a substantial enhancement in the SPDC process which, subsequently, by using the quantum-classical correspondence principle, translates to very high photon-pair generation rates. The emitted radiation is highly directional and perpendicular to the metasurface in contrast to relevant dielectric structures. The incorporation of circular polarized excitation further increases the photon-pair generation efficiency. The presented work will lead to the design of new efficient ultrathin SPDC single-photon nanophotonic sources working at room temperature that are expected to be critical components in free-space quantum optical communications. In a more general context, our findings can have various applications in the emerging field of quantum plasmonics.