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Quantum Nanophotonic Materials, Devices, and Systems

Coherent light absorption and photon number discrimination (Conference Presentation)

Anton N. Vetlugin, Ruixiang Guo, Filippo Martinelli, Nikolay I. Zheludev, Cesare Soci

Published Oct 4, 2022• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Interference on thin-film and metamaterial absorbers enables coherent control and processing of quantum light. Recently, this phenomenon was used to demonstrate deterministic control of photon absorption probability, quantum states filtering, anti-Hong-Ou-Mandel interference, and application of geometric (Berry) phase for remote control of light dissipation. Here, we expand these ideas by introducing the regime of distributed coherent absorption where light quanta are absorbed within spatially separated active layers. We show that this scheme allows photon number discriminating detection free from the limitations of conventional temporal and spatial multiplication approaches. Free space and integrated designs are discussed.

DOI
10.1117/12.2634369

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Interference on thin-film and metamaterial absorbers enables coherent control and processing of quantum light. Recently, this phenomenon was used to demonstrate deterministic control of photon absorption probability, quantum states filtering, anti-Hong-Ou-Mandel interference, and application of geometric (Berry) phase for remote control of light dissipation. Here, we expand these ideas by introducing the regime of distributed coherent absorption where light quanta are absorbed within spatially separated active layers. We show that this scheme allows photon number discriminating detection free from the limitations of conventional temporal and spatial multiplication approaches. Free space and integrated designs are discussed.
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In the past few years, a new phenomenon of absorption, called “coherent perfect absorption (CPA)”, has attracted significant attentions [1, 2]. CPA relies on the coherent interference of light. In a typical CPA system, two coherent beams are incident on the absorber from opposite sides and the reflected light of one beam interfere with the transmitted light of the other and vice versa. CPA was first realized using a silicon slab cavity, and has then been reported in composite absorptive films, planar metamaterials, graphene, waveguides and so on.
The technologies of heating, photovoltaics, water photocatalysis and artificial photosynthesis depend on the absorption of light and novel approaches such as coherent absorption from a standing wave promise total dissipation of energy. Extending the control of absorption down to very low light levels and eventually to the single-photon regime is of great interest and yet remains largely unexplored. Here we demonstrate the coherent absorption of single photons in a deeply subwavelength 50% absorber. We show that while the absorption of photons from a travelling wave is probabilistic, standing wave absorption can be observed deterministically, with nearly unitary probability of coupling a photon into a mode of the material, for example, a localized plasmon when this is a metamaterial excited at the plasmon resonance. These results bring a better understanding of the coherent absorption process, which is of central importance for light harvesting, detection, sensing and photonic data processing applications.
Multiple photon absorption processes typically have a nonlinear dependence on the amplitude of the incident optical field. On the other hand, quantum technologies rely on single photon events. It has therefore been of great technical difficulty to achieve nonlinear devices using single photons. This is due to the small cross-section of absorption in room temperature devices, with multi-photon absorption events occurring with extremely low probability. The lack of access to nonlinear processes severely inhibits the use of optics for a large number of applications surrounding quantum technologies. We demonstrate experimentally that by exploiting a coherent absorption mechanism for N=2 N00N states, outlined theoretically by Jeffers in 2000 [1] and experimentally explored by Roger et. al. in 2016 [2], that it is possible to determine and enhance the number of two photon states that are absorbed. Here a 50% absorbing metasurface is placed inside a Sagnac interferometer into which we inject a N00N state. We show that by tuning the phase φ of the input state, |2,0〉 + exp(-ί2φ) |0,2〉, we can selectively tune the output state. For an input phase of φ = π/2 or 3π/2 we find that a single photon is absorbed with 100% probability. However, when we tune the input phase to φ = 0 or π we see that either 0 or 2 photons are absorbed with equal probability. We have developed a theoretical model that, with no free parameters, fits the experimentally measured two-photon contribution and finds the maximum contribution of |0,0) (0,0| to the output state to be 40.5%.