Cavities Play Catch with Photons

Yi Yin

Asaf Farhi, Wei Dai, Seunghwi Kim +2 more

We show that a cavity at an absorbing exceptional point captures additional temporal orders of any incoming waveform, resulting in efficient passive state transfer and photon detection.

Kwang-Je Kim, Andrew M. Sessler

Asaf Farhi, Wei Dai, Seunghwi Kim +2 more

State transfer and photon detection are fundamental processes that have direct implications in fields such as quantum computing and photonic circuits. However, while naturally emitted photons decay exponentially in time, to perfectly capture a photon its envelope should increase exponentially to match the time-reversed response of the absorbing cavity. Here we show that a cavity at a virtual absorbing exceptional point captures additional temporal orders of an incoming waveform, resulting in efficient passive state transfer and photon detection. This approach paves the way for state transfer at optical frequencies and efficient detection of a spontaneously emitted photon.

Diego A. R. Dalvit

Jeremy Upham, Yoshinori Tanaka, Takashi Asano +1 more

We demonstrate catching and releasing of optical pulses by dynamic Q factor control of a photonic crystal nanocavity. Optical pulses are caught and released on demand within the photon lifetime.