Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

Physical Review A

Unconventional single-photon blockade in non-Markovian systems

H. Z. Shen, Cheng Shang, Y. H. Zhou, X. X. Yi

Published Aug 29, 2018• 115 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The photon blockade based on weak nonlinearities is called unconventional photon blockade. The studies of the unconventional photon blockade in recent decades are all limited to Markovian approximation. In this paper, we propose a scheme to achieve a strong photon antibunching in non-Markovian reservoir. An exact non-Markovian master equation for the optical cavity coupled with a degenerate optical parametric amplifier (DOPA) is derived. We show that this unconventional photon blockade originates from the destructive interference between two paths which are formed by the DOPA pump and a driving field. Unconventional single-photon blockades that exhibit a transition from the non-Markovian to Markovian regime by controlling environmental spectral width regardless of the weakness of DOPA gain and driving field are found. We analytically derive an optimal condition for strong antibunching, which is in good agreement with that obtained by the full numerical simulation. The presented results then are compared with that given by Markovian approximation in the weak-coupling limit. Our scheme might have paved an avenue towards the investigations of unconventional photon blockades in many other non-Markovian quantum systems in quantum optics.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.98.023856

Related papers

Nonreciprocal unconventional photon blockade in a driven dissipative cavity with parametric amplification

H. Z. Shen, Qiu Wang, Jiao Wang +1 more

In this paper, we show that nonreciprocal unconventional photon blockade can be observed in a spinning cavity immersed in a degenerate optical parametric amplifier (OPA) driven by the laser driving with weak Kerr nonlinearities through the Fizeau drag. We analytically derive the optimal conditions for strong antibunching, which are in good agreement with those obtained by numerical simulations. Under the weak driving condition, we discuss the physical origins of the nonreciprocal unconventional photon blockade, which originates from the destructive interference between different paths from the ground state to two-photon states by driving the device from the left side. While the quantum interference paths are broken when the device is driven from the right side, which leads to the occurring of the photon bunching. Moreover, we extend the above results to the general non-Markovian regimes, in which the cavity couples with a thermal reservoir consisting of collection of infinite oscillators (bosonic photonic modes). We show nonreciprocal unconventional photon blockade exhibits a transition from the non-Markovian to Markovian regimes by controlling environmental spectral width regardless of the weakness of OPA gain and driving field.

Physical Review A•Jan 22, 2020•143 citations

Unconventional photon blockade with non-Markovian effects in driven dissipative coupled cavities

H. Z. Shen, Ji-Feng Yang, X. X. Yi

The photon blockade based on destructive quantum interference is called the unconventional photon blockade (UPB), which has been intensively studied in Markovian systems but barely explored in the non-Markovian ones. In this paper, we construct a coupled-cavities system to achieve UPB with the non-Markovian effect, where the dissipationless left cavity and Markovian dissipative right cavity are respectively mediated by two-photon pump and single-photon driving field. Through the equivalence between the Markovian master equation and Heisenberg-Langevin equation for the environment initialization in the vacuum state, we can derive the exact non-Markovian Heisenberg-Langevin equation and reduced master equation for the left cavity, which contains the two-photon pump and effective single-photon driving field. In the non-Markovian regime (the dissipation falling below a threshold), the effective single-photon driving field holds nonzero, which can lead to UPB occurring due to a closed quantum interference path forming. When the dissipation exceeds the threshold, the system enters the Markovian regime, where UPB weakens. Especially, if the dissipation approaches infinity, UPB for the left cavity disappears due to the effective single-photon driving field tending to zero. We analytically derive an optimal condition for UPB, which is in good agreement with that obtained by the numerical simulation. We also discuss the situation where both cavities have dissipations. Finally, the above model is extended to a general system involving a dissipationless left cavity (mediated by two-photon pump) coupling with noninteracting dissipative right cavities (driven by single-photon driving fields). Our scheme might pave an avenue towards applications on photon statistics and quantum optics with the non-Markovian effect.

Physical Review A•Apr 29, 2024•62 citations

Quantum-interference-assisted photon blockade in a cavity via parametric interactions

Bijita Sarma, Amarendra K. Sarma

We propose a scheme to achieve a strong photon antibunching with a degenerate optical parametric amplifier coupled to a cavity via unconventional photon blockade. The photon blockade occurs as a result of the suppression of two-photon excitation due to a quantum interference effect between different transition paths. Via analytical calculations, we find out the conditions for optimized photon antibunching in terms of parametric gain and the parametric amplifier pump phase. Calculations of second-order correlation function demonstrate strong photon antibunching. The numerical results are compared with the analytical results and both are in complete agreement. Under the optimal parameters, the system can be used to generate sub-Poissonian light.

Physical Review A•Nov 13, 2017•88 citations

Tunable photon blockade in coupled semiconductor cavities

H. Z. Shen, Y. H. Zhou, X. X. Yi

In this paper, we show that photon blockade can be observed in a system with weak Kerr nonlinearities. The system consists of two spatially overlapping single-mode semiconductor cavities with tunable one- and two-photon tunneling. We find that both conventional and unconventional single-photon blockades are controllable by manipulating the phase in the hopping regardless of the weakness of nonlinearity. We refer to the photon blockade with weak nonlinearities as an unconventional photon blockade. The unconventional photon blockade effect originates from the destructive interference between different paths from the ground state to two-photon states. We analytically derive the exact optimal conditions for strong antibunching, which are in good agreement with those obtained by numerical simulations. The optimal parameters for photon blockade are derived. Based on these parameters, the semiconductor cavity systems can be used as a single-photon source in regimes of both weak and strong nonlinearities.

Physical Review A•Jun 5, 2015•136 citations

Unconventional photon blockade in cavity QED with parametric amplification

Madan Mohan Mahana, Sanket Das, Tarak Nath Dey

We theoretically investigate the quantum-interference-induced photon blockade effect in a single two-level atom-cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) system with degenerate parametric amplification. The analytical calculations reveal the optimal parametric gain and phase parameters for achieving optimum unconventional photon blockade conditions. Under the optimal parameter regime, the numerical results of the second-order correlation function demonstrate strong photon antibunching consistent with the analytical results. Furthermore, the numerical results corroborate that coherently driving the atom leads to a stronger photon blockade than a coherently driven cavity with the optimal parameters. We numerically demonstrate that the UPB effect is compromised by a non-zero cavity-atom coupling in the cavity-driven configuration. However, stronger photon antibunching can be attained with a non-zero cavity-atom coupling in the atom-driven configuration. This work may be suitable for experimentally realising a strongly antibunched single-photon source for applications in quantum technology.

arXiv:2505.04280•Physical Review A•Dec 24, 2025•2 citations

Nonreciprocal unconventional photon blockade in atom-cavity with χ(2) nonlinear medium

H. Z. Shen, T. Z. Luan, Y. H. Zhou +2 more

In this paper, we show that the photon blockade (PB) can be observed in a nonreciprocal way with a driven spinning atom-cavity coupled filled with [Formula: see text] nonlinear medium. We analytically derive the optimal conditions for strong photon antibunching, which are in good agreement with those obtained by numerical simulations. Under the weak driving condition, we discuss the physical origins of the nonreciprocal unconventional photon blockade (UPB), which originates from the destructive quantum interference between different paths from the ground state to two-photon states by driving the device from the left side. While the quantum interference paths are broken when the device is driven from the right side, which leads to the occurrence of the photon bunching. Moreover in the opposite direction of driving the device, we also observe another nonreciprocal UPB effect, which can occur by generating bunching and antibunching effects via driving the device from the left and right sides under the derived optimal conditions, respectively. Finally, we cannot observe the nonreciprocal UPB phenomenon with the large cavity decay compared to the atomic spontaneous emission rate (or the bad cavity limit), and give the physical reason behind it. Possible experimental implementation for this scheme is presented.

International Journal of Quantum Information•Jun 6, 2023•5 citations
The photon blockade based on weak nonlinearities is called unconventional photon blockade. The studies of the unconventional photon blockade in recent decades are all limited to Markovian approximation. In this paper, we propose a scheme to achieve a strong photon antibunching in non-Markovian reservoir. An exact non-Markovian master equation for the optical cavity coupled with a degenerate optical parametric amplifier (DOPA) is derived. We show that this unconventional photon blockade originates from the destructive interference between two paths which are formed by the DOPA pump and a driving field. Unconventional single-photon blockades that exhibit a transition from the non-Markovian to Markovian regime by controlling environmental spectral width regardless of the weakness of DOPA gain and driving field are found. We analytically derive an optimal condition for strong antibunching, which is in good agreement with that obtained by the full numerical simulation. The presented results then are compared with that given by Markovian approximation in the weak-coupling limit. Our scheme might have paved an avenue towards the investigations of unconventional photon blockades in many other non-Markovian quantum systems in quantum optics.
In this paper, we show that nonreciprocal unconventional photon blockade can be observed in a spinning cavity immersed in a degenerate optical parametric amplifier (OPA) driven by the laser driving with weak Kerr nonlinearities through the Fizeau drag. We analytically derive the optimal conditions for strong antibunching, which are in good agreement with those obtained by numerical simulations. Under the weak driving condition, we discuss the physical origins of the nonreciprocal unconventional photon blockade, which originates from the destructive interference between different paths from the ground state to two-photon states by driving the device from the left side. While the quantum interference paths are broken when the device is driven from the right side, which leads to the occurring of the photon bunching. Moreover, we extend the above results to the general non-Markovian regimes, in which the cavity couples with a thermal reservoir consisting of collection of infinite oscillators (bosonic photonic modes). We show nonreciprocal unconventional photon blockade exhibits a transition from the non-Markovian to Markovian regimes by controlling environmental spectral width regardless of the weakness of OPA gain and driving field.
The photon blockade based on destructive quantum interference is called the unconventional photon blockade (UPB), which has been intensively studied in Markovian systems but barely explored in the non-Markovian ones. In this paper, we construct a coupled-cavities system to achieve UPB with the non-Markovian effect, where the dissipationless left cavity and Markovian dissipative right cavity are respectively mediated by two-photon pump and single-photon driving field. Through the equivalence between the Markovian master equation and Heisenberg-Langevin equation for the environment initialization in the vacuum state, we can derive the exact non-Markovian Heisenberg-Langevin equation and reduced master equation for the left cavity, which contains the two-photon pump and effective single-photon driving field. In the non-Markovian regime (the dissipation falling below a threshold), the effective single-photon driving field holds nonzero, which can lead to UPB occurring due to a closed quantum interference path forming. When the dissipation exceeds the threshold, the system enters the Markovian regime, where UPB weakens. Especially, if the dissipation approaches infinity, UPB for the left cavity disappears due to the effective single-photon driving field tending to zero. We analytically derive an optimal condition for UPB, which is in good agreement with that obtained by the numerical simulation. We also discuss the situation where both cavities have dissipations. Finally, the above model is extended to a general system involving a dissipationless left cavity (mediated by two-photon pump) coupling with noninteracting dissipative right cavities (driven by single-photon driving fields). Our scheme might pave an avenue towards applications on photon statistics and quantum optics with the non-Markovian effect.
We propose a scheme to achieve a strong photon antibunching with a degenerate optical parametric amplifier coupled to a cavity via unconventional photon blockade. The photon blockade occurs as a result of the suppression of two-photon excitation due to a quantum interference effect between different transition paths. Via analytical calculations, we find out the conditions for optimized photon antibunching in terms of parametric gain and the parametric amplifier pump phase. Calculations of second-order correlation function demonstrate strong photon antibunching. The numerical results are compared with the analytical results and both are in complete agreement. Under the optimal parameters, the system can be used to generate sub-Poissonian light.
In this paper, we show that photon blockade can be observed in a system with weak Kerr nonlinearities. The system consists of two spatially overlapping single-mode semiconductor cavities with tunable one- and two-photon tunneling. We find that both conventional and unconventional single-photon blockades are controllable by manipulating the phase in the hopping regardless of the weakness of nonlinearity. We refer to the photon blockade with weak nonlinearities as an unconventional photon blockade. The unconventional photon blockade effect originates from the destructive interference between different paths from the ground state to two-photon states. We analytically derive the exact optimal conditions for strong antibunching, which are in good agreement with those obtained by numerical simulations. The optimal parameters for photon blockade are derived. Based on these parameters, the semiconductor cavity systems can be used as a single-photon source in regimes of both weak and strong nonlinearities.
We theoretically investigate the quantum-interference-induced photon blockade effect in a single two-level atom-cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) system with degenerate parametric amplification. The analytical calculations reveal the optimal parametric gain and phase parameters for achieving optimum unconventional photon blockade conditions. Under the optimal parameter regime, the numerical results of the second-order correlation function demonstrate strong photon antibunching consistent with the analytical results. Furthermore, the numerical results corroborate that coherently driving the atom leads to a stronger photon blockade than a coherently driven cavity with the optimal parameters. We numerically demonstrate that the UPB effect is compromised by a non-zero cavity-atom coupling in the cavity-driven configuration. However, stronger photon antibunching can be attained with a non-zero cavity-atom coupling in the atom-driven configuration. This work may be suitable for experimentally realising a strongly antibunched single-photon source for applications in quantum technology.
In this paper, we show that the photon blockade (PB) can be observed in a nonreciprocal way with a driven spinning atom-cavity coupled filled with [Formula: see text] nonlinear medium. We analytically derive the optimal conditions for strong photon antibunching, which are in good agreement with those obtained by numerical simulations. Under the weak driving condition, we discuss the physical origins of the nonreciprocal unconventional photon blockade (UPB), which originates from the destructive quantum interference between different paths from the ground state to two-photon states by driving the device from the left side. While the quantum interference paths are broken when the device is driven from the right side, which leads to the occurrence of the photon bunching. Moreover in the opposite direction of driving the device, we also observe another nonreciprocal UPB effect, which can occur by generating bunching and antibunching effects via driving the device from the left and right sides under the derived optimal conditions, respectively. Finally, we cannot observe the nonreciprocal UPB phenomenon with the large cavity decay compared to the atomic spontaneous emission rate (or the bad cavity limit), and give the physical reason behind it. Possible experimental implementation for this scheme is presented.