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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC)

Time-resolved scattering of a single photon by a single atom

Matthias Steiner, Victor Leong, Mathias Alexander Seidler, Alessandro Ceré, Christian Kurtsiefer

Published Jun 1, 2017• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Summary form only given. Is an atom more likely to scatter a photon with an exponentially rising or decaying temporal profile? We try to answer this question experimentally and investigate the scattering of heralded photons from a single atom in free-space. We use a single Rubidium atom trapped in optical tweezers and prepared in the groundstate of a cyclic dipole transition as a textbook-like two-level system. A time-ordered photon pair source, in conjunction with an asymmetric cavity, generates heralded single photons with an exponentially decaying or rising temporal profile. The heralded photons are resonant with the atomic transition and have a bandwidth comparable to the atomic linewidth. The photons are strongly focused onto the atom by a large numerical aperture lens. We study the scattering dynamics by measuring the atomic emission and the reduction in the number of transmitted photons. We perform the scattering experiment for photons with exponentially decaying and rising temporal envelopes and find that the atomic dynamics depend on the temporal profile of the photon. The atomic absorption is shorter but has a higher maximum for the rising photon than for the the decaying one. Interestingly, the overall probability that the photon is scattered by the atom is similar for decaying and rising photons.

DOI
10.1109/cleoe-eqec.2017.8087325

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Summary form only given. Is an atom more likely to scatter a photon with an exponentially rising or decaying temporal profile? We try to answer this question experimentally and investigate the scattering of heralded photons from a single atom in free-space. We use a single Rubidium atom trapped in optical tweezers and prepared in the groundstate of a cyclic dipole transition as a textbook-like two-level system. A time-ordered photon pair source, in conjunction with an asymmetric cavity, generates heralded single photons with an exponentially decaying or rising temporal profile. The heralded photons are resonant with the atomic transition and have a bandwidth comparable to the atomic linewidth. The photons are strongly focused onto the atom by a large numerical aperture lens. We study the scattering dynamics by measuring the atomic emission and the reduction in the number of transmitted photons. We perform the scattering experiment for photons with exponentially decaying and rising temporal envelopes and find that the atomic dynamics depend on the temporal profile of the photon. The atomic absorption is shorter but has a higher maximum for the rising photon than for the the decaying one. Interestingly, the overall probability that the photon is scattered by the atom is similar for decaying and rising photons.
Scattering of light by matter has been studied extensively in the past. Yet, the most fundamental process, the scattering of a single photon by a single atom, is largely unexplored. One prominent prediction of quantum optics is the deterministic absorption of a travelling photon by a single atom, provided the photon waveform matches spatially and temporally the time-reversed version of a spontaneously emitted photon. Here we experimentally address this prediction and investigate the influence of the photon's temporal profile on the scattering dynamics using a single trapped atom and heralded single photons. In a time-resolved measurement of atomic excitation we find a 56(11)% increase of the peak excitation by photons with an exponentially rising profile compared with a decaying one. However, the overall scattering probability remains unchanged within the experimental uncertainties. Our results demonstrate that envelope tailoring of single photons enables precise control of the photon-atom interaction.
We prepare single photons with a temporal envelope with rising exponential shape, resembling the time-reversed version of photons from the spontaneous decay process using a parametric conversion process in a cold atomic vapor. The mechanism is based on correlated photon pair preparation and heralding of one photon by the other one after engineering the temporal envelope of the herald.1 Such a temporal single photon profile is ideal for absorption by a two level system.2, 3 We demonstrate this in an experiment showcasing the absorption by a single Rubidium atom.4
We prepare heralded single photons from a photon pair source based on nondegenerate four-wave mixing in a cold atomic ensemble via a cascade decay scheme. Their statistics shows strong antibunching with a value for the second order correlation at zero delay less than 0.03, indicating a near single photon character. In an optical homodyne experiment, we directly measure the temporal envelope of these photons and find, depending on the heralding scheme, an exponentially decaying or rising profile. Such a rising envelope is required for the efficient interaction between a single photon and a two level system. At the same time, their observation illustrates the breakdown of a realistic interpretation of the heralding process in terms of defining an initial condition of a physical system.
We demonstrate a way to prepare single photons with a temporal envelope that resembles the time reversal of photons from the spontaneous decay process. We use the photon pairs generated from a time-ordered cascade decay: the detection of the first photon of the cascade is used as a herald for the ground-state transition resonant second photon. We show how the interaction of the heralding photon with an asymmetric Fabry-Perot cavity reverses the temporal shape of its twin photon from a decaying to a rising exponential envelope. This single photon is expected to be ideal for interacting with two-level systems.
The absorption of a single photon by a single two-level system (TLS) in free space is a fundamental physical process. In this contribution, we present the experimental realization of a model system to simulate the dynamics of such an absorption experiment: Comparing the absorption process of a single photon by a single TLS and the incoupling dynamics of an optical resonator, one finds an analogy between the energy stored inside the resonator and the probability of the photon to be absorbed by the TLS [1]. Both systems, resonators and TLS, respond in an equivalent way to the temporal profile of the incident light pulse. The energy storage in a resonator as well as the absorption of a single photon by a TLS can reach an unit efficiency under idealized conditions. Such an optimized process is achieved by an exponentially rising incident light field with a time constant which matches the lifetime of the system [2]. For such a perfect coupling, the end mirror of the resonator needs to have a reflectivity of unity. This corresponds to the excitation of a TLS from the complete solid angle. For a smaller reflectivity of the end mirror, the cavity simulates the absorption dynamics in the case of excitation from only a part of the solid angle. However, using real mirrors, a good analogy with excitation from a large solid angle can still be obtained by using a strongly asymmetric resonator, i.e. an incoupling mirror which has a significantly lower reflectivity than the end mirror of the cavity.