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Physical Review Letters

Single-Mode Photon Blockade Enhanced by Bi-Tone Drive

Ming Li, Yan‐Lei Zhang, Shu-Hao Wu, Chun‐Hua Dong, Xu‐Bo Zou, Guang‐Can Guo, Chang‐Ling Zou

Published Jul 18, 2022• 37 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A scheme for observing photon blockade in a single bosonic mode with weak nonlinearity is proposed and numerically verified. Using a simple bi-tone drive, sub- and super-Poissonian light can be generated with high fidelity. With a periodically poled lithium niobate microcavity, a sub-Poissonian photon source with kHz count rate can be realized. Our proposed scheme is robust against parameter variations of the cavity and extendable to any bosonic system with anharmonic energy levels.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.129.043601

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A scheme for observing photon blockade in a single bosonic mode with weak nonlinearity is proposed and numerically verified. Using a simple bi-tone drive, sub- and super-Poissonian light can be generated with high fidelity. With a periodically poled lithium niobate microcavity, a sub-Poissonian photon source with kHz count rate can be realized. Our proposed scheme is robust against parameter variations of the cavity and extendable to any bosonic system with anharmonic energy levels.
Multiphoton blockade provides an efficient way to achieve entangled photon sources and leads to wide applications in modern quantum technologies. Here, we propose a scheme to realize multiphoton blockade by a multi-tone drive. Specifically, we demonstrate two-photon and three-photon blockades in a single-mode optical Kerr resonator using a two-tone and a three-tone drive, respectively. In comparison with the single-tone drive, except for the blockade of the (n+1)(n+1)(n+1)th photon excitation due to large detuning, the key mechanism in this scheme is the sequently resonant excitations of all the mmm-photon states (m≤nm\leq nm≤n) by the nnn-tone drive, which lead to the enhancement of photon generation and the demonstration of multiphoton blockade in the weak driving regime. Moreover, the photon distribution within the system can be adjusted on demand by tuning the relative amplitudes of the driving fields for different frequencies. The scheme can be extended to other bosonic systems and be applied to demonstrate other multiphoton physical effects.
Multiphoton blockade provides an efficient way to achieve entangled photon sources and leads to wide applications in modern quantum technologies. Here, we propose a scheme to realize multiphoton blockade by a multitone drive. Specifically, we demonstrate two-photon and three-photon blockades in a single- mode optical Kerr resonator using a two-tone and a three-tone drive, respectively. In comparison with the single-tone drive, except for the blockade of the (n+1)th(n+1)\mathrm{th}(n+1)th photon excitation due to large detuning, the key mechanism in this scheme is the sequentially resonant excitations of all the mmm-photon states $(m\ensuremath{\le}n)$ by the nnn-tone drive, which lead to the enhancement of photon generation and the demonstration of multiphoton blockade in the weak driving regime. Moreover, the photon distribution within the system can be adjusted on demand by tuning the relative amplitudes of the driving fields for different frequencies. The scheme can be extended to other bosonic systems and be applied to demonstrate other multiphoton physical effects.
We propose a novel scheme for realizing single-photon blockade in a weakly driven hybrid cavity optomechanical system consisting of a nonlinear photonic crystal. Sub-Poissonian statistics is realized even when the single-photon optomechanical coupling strength is smaller than the decay rate of the optical mode. The scheme relaxes the requirement of strong coupling for photon blockade in optomechanical systems. It is shown that photon blockade could be generated at the telecommunication wavelength.
Optomechanical systems are capable of coupling to various engineered quantum systems. The ability of extending optomechanical systems to the quantum regime holds the potential for wide applications in quantum information processing and quantum sensing. Due to its importance in single-photon sources and hybrid quantum devices, optomechanical photon blockade (OMPB) has been theoretically predicted with various types of interactions. However, the realization of OMPB requires strict conditions, such as strong optomechanical coupling or precise control of system parameters. Here, we propose how to release such conditions and realize OMPB with experimentally accessible parameters. We find strong OMPB in a weak coupling regime by using bi-tone drive. Moreover, such OMPB can be flexibly controlled by tuning optical detuning. Our work provides a method for achieving strong antibunched photon-photon correlation in weak coupling optomechanics, enabling hybrid quantum devices for applications in quantum information processing.
The absence of the single-photon nonlinearity has been a major roadblock in developing quantum photonic circuits at optical frequencies. In this paper, we demonstrate a periodically poled thin film lithium niobate microring resonator (PPLNMR) that reaches 5,000,000%/W second-harmonic conversion efficiency—almost 20-fold enhancement over the state-of-the-art—by accessing its largest χ ( 2 ) tensor component d 33 via quasi-phase matching. The corresponding single-photon coupling rate g / 2 π is estimated to be 1.2 MHz, which is an important milestone as it approaches the dissipation rate κ / 2 π of best-available lithium niobate microresonators developed in the community. Using a figure of merit defined as g / κ , our device reaches a single-photon nonlinear anharmonicity approaching 1%. We show that, by further scaling of the device, it is possible to improve the single-photon anharmonicity to a regime where photon blockade effect can be manifested.
Universal photon blockade in a two-mode Jaynes-Cummings model incorporating third-order Kerr nonlinearity is demonstrated with a single two-level atom coupled to a waveguide microcavity. Realization of this universal photon blockade is attributed to the cooperative effects of field-atom coupling and Kerr nonlinearity. More importantly, this antibunching is found to be robust against the atomic spontaneous emission, driving field strength, and defect-induced cavity mode coupling. The strong antibunching effect in this resonance-driven scheme is essentially different from those without Kerr nonlinearity. Moreover, this work expands the platform for achieving universal photon blockade and reveals the cooperative advantages of nonlinearities in enhancing the purity and brightness of single-photon sources, representing a novel strategy toward high-performance single-photon sources in integrated quantum optical devices.