Quantum Zeno blockade allows all-optical switching in a counterintuitive “interaction-free” manner. Using a lithium-niobate microdisk cavity nanofabricated on chip, we have observed phase matched sum-frequency generation and interaction-free switching between optical pulses in two tightly confined whispering-gallery modes. We have also verified that our device is suitable for nonlinear operations in a single-photon regime. Our results point to a scalable, chip-integrated platform for nonlinear optics extendable to the quantum regime.
Quantum Zeno blockade allows all-optical switching in a counterintuitive “interaction-free” manner. Using a lithium-niobate microdisk cavity nanofabricated on chip, we have observed phase matched sum-frequency generation and interaction-free switching between optical pulses in two tightly confined whispering-gallery modes. We have also verified that our device is suitable for nonlinear operations in a single-photon regime. Our results point to a scalable, chip-integrated platform for nonlinear optics extendable to the quantum regime.
We present an all-optical control device in which coupling a weak control optical field into a high-Q lithium niobate whispering-gallery-mode microcavity decouples it from a signal field due to nonlinear optical interactions. This results in switching and modulation of the signal with low-power control pulses. In the quantum limit, the underlying nonlinear-optical process corresponds to the quantum Zeno blockade. Its ``interaction-free'' nature effectively alleviates loss and decoherence for the signal waves. This work therefore presents experimental progress towards acquiring large phase shifts with few photons or even at the single-photon level.
Overlapping in an optical medium with nonlinear susceptibilities, lightwaves can interact, changing each other's phase, wavelength, waveform shape, or other properties. Such nonlinear optical phenomena, discovered over a half-century ago, have led to a breadth of important applications. Applied to quantum-mechanical signals, however, these phenomena face fundamental challenges that arise from the multimodal nature of the interaction between the electromagnetic fields, such as phase noises and spontaneous Raman scattering. The quantum Zeno blockade allows strong interaction between lightwaves without physical overlap between them, thus offering a viable solution for the aforementioned challenges, as indicated in recent bulk-optics experiments. Here, we report on the observation of quantum Zeno blockade on chip, where a lightwave is modulated by another in a distinct "interaction-free" manner. For quantum applications, we also verify its operations on single-photon signals. Our results promise a scalable platform for overcoming several longstanding challenges in applied nonlinear and quantum optics, enabling manipulation and interaction of quantum signals without decoherence.
When overlapping in an optical medium with nonlinear susceptibility, light waves can interact with each other, changing their phases, wavelengths, shapes, and so on. Such nonlinear effects, discovered over a half century ago, have given rise to a breadth of important applications. Applying to quantum-mechanical signals, however, they face fundamental challenges arising from the multimode nature of the interacting electromagnetic fields, such as phase noises and Raman scattering. Quantum Zeno blockade allows strong interaction of light waves without them physically overlapping, thus providing a viable solution for those challenges, as indicated in recent bulk-optics experiments. Here, we report on the observation of quantum Zeno blockade on chip, where a light wave is modulated by another in a distinct "interaction-free" manner. For quantum applications, we also verify its operations on a single-photon level. Our results promise a scalable platform for overcoming several grand challenges faced by nonlinear optics and quantum information processing, enabling, e.g., manipulation and interaction of quantum signals without decoherence.
We demonstrate parametric all-optical modulation in a periodically-poled lithium niobate microring resonator on chip. It employs quantum Zeno blockade between two distinct waves, a signal and a pump, through their sum-frequency generation at a large per-photon efficiency of 8.2 MHz. With nanosecond pump pulses at 6 mW peak power, 85.7% modulation extinction is observed, marking over 30~times efficiency improvement across various previous implementations. With only 2 mW pump peak power, 43.0% modulation extinction is observed for a doubly-stronger signal at 4 mW. This demonstrates, for the first time, that optical transistors with cascadability and fan-out are possible with just parametric nonlinear optics. These results, together with inherent advantages in such photonic integrated circuits, open the door to scalable technology for all-optical and quantum information processing.
Over the last two decades, the emergence of quantum information science has uncovered many practical applications in areas such as communications, imaging, and sensing where harnessing quantum features of Nature provides tremendous benefits over existing methods exploiting classical physical phenomena. In this effort, one of the frontiers of research has been to identify and utilize quantum phenomena that are not susceptible to environmental and parasitic noise processes. Quantum photonics has been at the forefront of these studies because it allows room-temperature access to its inherently quantum-mechanical features, and allows leveraging the mature telecommunication industry. Accompanying the weak environmental influence, however, are also weak optical nonlinearities. Efficient nonlinear optical interactions are indispensible for many of the existing protocols for quantum optical computation and communication, e.g. high-fidelity entangling quantum logic gates rely on large nonlinear responses at the one- or few-photon-level. While this has been addressed to a great extent by interfacing photons with single quantum emitters and cold atomic gases, scalability has remained elusive. In this work, we identify the macroscopic second-order nonlinear polarization as a robust platform to address this challenge, and utilize the recent advances in the burgeoning field of optical microcavities to enhance this nonlinear response. In particular, we show theoretically that by using the quantum Zeno effect, low-noise, single-photon-level optical nonlinearities can be realized in lithium niobate whispering-gallery-mode microcavities, and present experimental progress toward this goal. Using the measured strength of the second-order nonlinear response in lithium niobate, we modeled the nonlinear system in the strong coupling regime using the Schrödinger picture framework and theoretically demonstrated that the single-photon-level operation can be observed for cavity lifetimes in excess of 500 ns for all the three waves in the interaction, provided a cavity of radius R < 10 μm is fabricated. Experimentally, we showed that the absorption-limited quality ( Q) factors for lithium niobate, Qintrinsic ≈ 108, can be achieved using diamond-turning methods for disk radii, R > 100 μm, whereas for the smaller disks, additional rigorous polishing may be required. We also fabricated resonators as small as R ∼ 40 μm via this method. In a millimeter-sized resonator, we experimentally demonstrated triply resonant sum-frequency generation, which allowed for an observation of the classical manifestation of the quantum Zeno effect, wherein line-splitting occurs due to the high efficiency intracavity frequency conversion. For the sub-100 μm resonators, we present phase-matching calculations and dispersion-management techniques using analytical approximations and rigorous finite-element-method simulations. Experimentally, Q -factor measurements are shown, and we identify the specific short-comings of the fabrication procedure that may have led to the lower, surface-roughness-limited Q-factors. Finally, we identify pathways toward achieving the single-photon-level nonlinear optics using off-resonant nonlinear optics, which requires the simultaneous realization of phase-matching, large cavity lifetimes, and small mode volumes. We believe this would be feasible in the near future as more advanced fabrication and processing methods are developed for crystalline materials and novel nonlinear crystals are synthesized.