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Physical Review Applied

Engineering Photon-Photon Interactions within Rubidium-Filled Waveguides

Christopher Perrella, P. S. Light, Shahraam Afshar Vahid, Fetah Benabid, Andre Nicholas Luiten

Published Apr 3, 2018• 16 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Strong photon-photon interactions are a key requirement for numerous protocols in quantum computing and communication. Generation of these interactions mediated by atomic vapor in a hollow waveguide has shown great promise, with efficiency enhanced by the tight transverse confinement and extended interaction length in the optical fiber. The authors investigate the strength of such interactions in a series of hollow-core photonic-crystal fibers, and show that they scale only with optical-mode diameter, not mode area (as might be expected). This insight allows targeting of specific photon-photon interaction strengths in waveguide design.

DOI
10.1103/physrevapplied.9.044001

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Strong photon-photon interactions are a key requirement for numerous protocols in quantum computing and communication. Generation of these interactions mediated by atomic vapor in a hollow waveguide has shown great promise, with efficiency enhanced by the tight transverse confinement and extended interaction length in the optical fiber. The authors investigate the strength of such interactions in a series of hollow-core photonic-crystal fibers, and show that they scale only with optical-mode diameter, not mode area (as might be expected). This insight allows targeting of specific photon-photon interaction strengths in waveguide design.
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Recent demonstrations of light-matter interactions with atoms and molecules confined to hollow waveguides offer great promise for ultralow-light-level applications. The use of waveguides allows for tight optical confinement over interaction lengths much greater than what could be achieved in bulk geometries. However, the combination of strong atom-photon interactions and nonuniformity of guided light modes gives rise to spectroscopic features that must be understood in order to take full advantage of the properties of such systems. We use light-induced atomic desorption to generate an optically dense Rb vapor at room temperature inside a hollow-core photonic band-gap fiber. Saturable-absorption spectroscopy and passive slow-light experiments reveal large ac Stark shifts, power broadening, and transit-time broadening, that are present in this system even at nanowatt powers.
Cold atoms confined inside a hollow core photonic crystal fiber with core diameter of a few photon wavelengths are a promising medium for studying nonlinear optical interactions at extremely low light levels. The high electric field intensity per photon, large optical depths, and interaction lengths not limited by diffraction are some of the unique features of this system. We describe recent progress in our experiment that uses a combination of magnetic trapping and a red-detuned optical dipole trap to transfer cold rubidium atoms into the hollow-core fiber. We present data on transfer efficiencies as well as preliminary experiments towards nonlinear optics with few photon pulses.
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Hollow-core photonic-crystal waveguides filled with cold atoms can support giant optical nonlinearities through nondispersive propagation of light tightly confined in the transverse direction. Here we explore electromagnetically induced transparency is such structures, considering a pair of counterpropagating weak quantum fields in the medium of coherently driven atoms in the ladder configuration. Strong dipole-dipole interactions between optically excited, polarized Rydberg states of the atoms translate into a large dispersive interaction between the two fields. This can be used to attain a spatially homogeneous conditional phase shift of $\ensuremath{\pi}$ for two single-photon pulses, realizing a deterministic photonic phase gate, or to implement a quantum nondemolition measurement of the photon number in the signal pulse by a coherent probe, thereby achieving a heralded source of single- or few-photon pulses.