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Acta Physica Sinica

Low-noise optical field phase-shifting manipulated using a coherently-prepared three-level atomic medium

Guan Jia, Gu Yi-Sheng, Zhu Cheng-Jie, Yang Ya-Ping

Published Jan 1, 2017• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We propose a multifunction phase-shifting manipulator with low noise at a single-photon level,by using a threelevel atomic scheme.This three-level system interacts with a strong pumping field and a weak probe field with a large detuning.Due to this large detuning,two lower states can be coherently prepared prior to the injection of the pump and probe fields.In our configuration,the duration of the pumping field is much longer than that of the probe field. By solving the Heisenberg-Langevin equations of our system under the steady state approximation,we calculate the linear susceptibility of the system and examine the quantum noise properties of the probe field in detail.We show that this scheme,which rests on the process of two-wave mixing with initial atomic coherence,exhibits many interesting properties that neither typical electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) schemes nor active Raman gain (ARG) schemes possess.Although both EIT-and ARG-based schemes have been widely investigated in atomic medium,the direct generalizations of these schemes to the single/few photon limit prove to be more problematic.The low fidelity due to the significant probe-field attenuation in EIT medium and the large quantum noise due to the amplification of the probe field in an active Raman gain medium are the main obstacles that prohibit a high-fidelity,low-noise phase shifter from being realized in the single/few photon limit.Physically,this scheme can be viewed as a hybrid scheme in which two processes of different physical principles are allowed to interfere with each other to achieve many desired functionalities. For instance,it can be used as a lossless two-photon-broadband phase-shifter with suitable system parameters.It can also be used as an attenuator/amplifier and a total transparency with a zero phase shift.In particular,we show that by locking the pump field intensity and the two-photon detuning simultaneously a flat constant π-phase shift can be realized with unit probe fidelity in a broad probe field frequency range.Applying the quantum regression theorem,we calculate the noise spectrum of the outgoing probe field as a large phase shift is achieved,and show that this two-photon-insensitive π-phase shift may significantly reduce the quantum noise fluctuations associated with a Raman gain process,and have a lot of potential applications for quantum information processing and optical telecommunication.The realization of this broadband π-phase-shift with significantly reduced quantum noise fluctuations makes this scheme attractive for the realization of low-noise phase-gate/polarization-gate at single-photon level.

DOI
10.7498/aps.66.024205

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We propose a multifunction phase-shifting manipulator with low noise at a single-photon level,by using a threelevel atomic scheme.This three-level system interacts with a strong pumping field and a weak probe field with a large detuning.Due to this large detuning,two lower states can be coherently prepared prior to the injection of the pump and probe fields.In our configuration,the duration of the pumping field is much longer than that of the probe field. By solving the Heisenberg-Langevin equations of our system under the steady state approximation,we calculate the linear susceptibility of the system and examine the quantum noise properties of the probe field in detail.We show that this scheme,which rests on the process of two-wave mixing with initial atomic coherence,exhibits many interesting properties that neither typical electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) schemes nor active Raman gain (ARG) schemes possess.Although both EIT-and ARG-based schemes have been widely investigated in atomic medium,the direct generalizations of these schemes to the single/few photon limit prove to be more problematic.The low fidelity due to the significant probe-field attenuation in EIT medium and the large quantum noise due to the amplification of the probe field in an active Raman gain medium are the main obstacles that prohibit a high-fidelity,low-noise phase shifter from being realized in the single/few photon limit.Physically,this scheme can be viewed as a hybrid scheme in which two processes of different physical principles are allowed to interfere with each other to achieve many desired functionalities. For instance,it can be used as a lossless two-photon-broadband phase-shifter with suitable system parameters.It can also be used as an attenuator/amplifier and a total transparency with a zero phase shift.In particular,we show that by locking the pump field intensity and the two-photon detuning simultaneously a flat constant π-phase shift can be realized with unit probe fidelity in a broad probe field frequency range.Applying the quantum regression theorem,we calculate the noise spectrum of the outgoing probe field as a large phase shift is achieved,and show that this two-photon-insensitive π-phase shift may significantly reduce the quantum noise fluctuations associated with a Raman gain process,and have a lot of potential applications for quantum information processing and optical telecommunication.The realization of this broadband π-phase-shift with significantly reduced quantum noise fluctuations makes this scheme attractive for the realization of low-noise phase-gate/polarization-gate at single-photon level.
We develop a hybrid scheme of cross phase modulation based on electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) and active Raman gain (ARG) in a multi-level atomic medium. The cross phase modulation, with low loss and without noise, is demonstrated in a room-temperature 85Rb vapor. We show that a π radian nonlinear Kerr phase shift of the signal light relative to a reference light is observed when the signal light is modulated by the phase control field with the low light intensity. We also show that the linear and the third-order absorption can be eliminated via the Raman gain, and the phase noise of the signal light can be ignored when the phase control light is applied in this hybrid scheme.
The realization of ultra-low-noise quantum phase gates and squeezed state rotations has long been a goal in the fields of quantum optics and quantum information. In this study, we present a theoretical proposal for an ultra-low-noise quantum phase gate and squeezed state rotation using a coherently prepared atomic medium. We demonstrate that, under a suitable set of parameters, the loss and gain mechanisms within this coherently prepared atomic system can balance each other over a broad range of probe field frequencies. As a result, the noise associated with the Raman gain process can be significantly suppressed within this frequency range. Additionally, we show that the system exhibits a strong optical Kerr nonlinearity, which can facilitate a π -phase gate operation for the probe field at the quantum level with high fidelity. Furthermore, when a squeezed probe field is injected, the squeezed state of the input nonclassical field can undergo a rotation. These findings provide valuable insights into the unique properties of gain-and-loss-balanced coherently prepared atomic media, paving the way for new applications in quantum information processing and quantum metrology.
Atomic coherence and interference manifested by electromagentically induced transparency (EIT) and coherent population trapping (CPT) plays an important role in the current studies of atom-photon interactions and has found numerous applications in optical physics. EIT is created in a three-level atomic system by a coupling field and results in destructive interference between two excitation paths of a weak probe laser interacting with the atomic medium. This leads to suppressed linear absorption and rapidly varying atomic dispersion for the probe laser near the atomic resonance, which provides the platform for a variety of applications such as nonlinear optics at low light levels, slow light manipulation, and quantum state engineering for photons and atoms. Here we extend the simple three-level EIT system to more complicated and versatile configurations in a multi-level atomic system coupled by multiple laser fields. We show that with multiple excitation paths provided by different laser fields, phase-dependent quantum interference is induced: either constructive or destructive interference can be realized by varying the relative phases among the laser fields. Two specific examples are discussed. One is a three-level system coupled by bichromatic coupling and probe fields, in which the phase dependent interference between the resonant two-photon Raman transitions can be initiated and controlled. Another is a four-level system coupled by two coupling fields and two probe fields, in which a double-EIT configuration is created by the phase-dependent interference between three-photon and one-photon excitation processes. We analyze the coherently coupled multi-level atomic system and discuss the control parameters for the onset of constructive or destructive quantum interference. We describe two experiments performed with cold Rb atoms that can be approximately treated as the coherently coupled three-level and four-level atomic systems respectively. The experimental results show the phase-dependent quantum coherence and interference in the multi-level Rb atomic system, and agree with the theoretical calculations based on the coherently coupled three-level or four-level model system.
A four-level tripod active-Raman-gain scheme is analyzed for obtaining phase-controlled gain, phase shift, and group velocity at room temperature.The scheme can be used to eliminate significant probe field attenuation or distortion which is unavoidable in the scheme based on electromagnetically induced transparency.It is shown that the intensity gain, phase shift, and group velocity of a probe field can be simultaneously manipulated by changing the relative phase of two pump fields.The scheme is also different from that proposed recently by Deng et al.where a probe-field gain always exists.New features of the scheme presented here raise the possibility of designing rapidly responding optical switches and gates for optical information processing.
Quantum vacuum noise is very detrimental for photon propagation and optical quantum memory, which particularly occurs in optically thick atomic media working under the condition of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) accompanied by a process of four-wave mixing (FWM). The suppression of quantum vacuum noise becomes now an imperative task for advancing the research and application of quantum memory. Here we present a scheme to suppress quantum vacuum noise and hence to improve the fidelity of photon propagation, by assuming that signal and idler laser fields are initially prepared in a two-mode squeezed vacuum state. With such a scheme, we show that the normal gain mode inherent in the EIT-based FWM system, which contributes optical gain to both the signal and idler fields, can be largely inhibited, giving rise to a significant suppression of the quantum vacuum noise along with their amplification and hence a large enhancement of the fidelity for photon propagation. The results reported here may have promising applications for high-fidelity quantum information processing and transformation, especially for improving the quality of multimode optical quantum memory based on EIT techniques.