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University of Thi-Qar Journal of Science

Single – Photon Interference with Thermally Excited Three – Level Cascade Atoms

Published May 12, 2019• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A theoretical model is presented for a singlephoton interference experiment in a beam -splitter using the second photon in a cascade transition of a threelevel atomic system.A clear anticorrelation effect is found in the coincidences of photons on the two sides of the beam splitter that can only be explained by quantum theory of light .A qualitative comparison is made with an earlier singlephoton interference experiment available in literature.

DOI
10.32792/utq/utjsci/vol1/1/9

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A theoretical model is presented for a singlephoton interference experiment in a beam -splitter using the second photon in a cascade transition of a threelevel atomic system.A clear anticorrelation effect is found in the coincidences of photons on the two sides of the beam splitter that can only be explained by quantum theory of light .A qualitative comparison is made with an earlier singlephoton interference experiment available in literature.
We report on two experiments using an atomic cascade as a light source, and a triggered detection scheme for the second photon of the cascade. The first experiment shows a strong anticorrelation between the triggered detections on both sides of a beam splitter. This result is in contradiction with any classical wave model of light, but in agreement with a quantum description involving single-photon states. The same source and detection scheme were used in a second experiment, where we have observed interferences with a visibility over 98%.
The interference effects that can be observed in the two output arms of a lossless beam splitter are calculated for incident light in the form of a photon-pair excitation in the two input arms. The output state that occurs when the photon pair is excited in a single input arm resembles that expected for independent classical particles, whereas quantum interference effects occur when the photon pair is divided between the two input arms. Detailed output photocount correlation functions are calculated for two-photon input states produced by a two-atom light source, a degenerate or nondegenerate parametric oscillator in a high-Q cavity, and an atomic cascade emission light source.
Expressions are derived for the intensity correlations or degrees of second-order coherence within and between two light beams of different frequency generated by cascade emission from a three-level atom. The atoms are assumed to be excited by two monochromatic coherent light beams in resonance with the upper and lower pairs of levels that constitute the triplet. The two emitted beams individually show photon antibunching and the correlation between the beams shows another complementary kind of non-classical effect. It is suggested that measurements on the system described here would provide more detailed information on quantum effects in cascade emission than previous observations with direct excitation to the uppermost atomic level by electron bombardment.
Quantum emitters such as semiconductor quantum dots can provide entangled photon pairs emitting from a system of cascaded states. However, the resulting temporal correlation between the two photons from the three-level ladder system has been shown to set a limit on the achievable two-photon interference. In this work, we show that such limitation, for photons emitted by the second transition, is only due to reduced temporal overlap at the interference beam splitter. We investigate this theoretically and experimentally by determining time-resolved four-photon coincidences between two successively emitted photon pairs. Post-emission synchronization shows the recovery of maximum interference visibility; in prospective quantum networks this could be achieved via deterministic quantum memories.