Single photon source is a non-classical light field with anti-bunching effect, which has a potential applications in the research of fundamental physics problems, quantum precision measurement, quantum communication, quantum computing, etc. The strong interaction between highly excited Rydberg atoms presents an excitation blockade effect. In a dense Rydberg atomic ensemble, the excitation of more than one Rydberg atom within a blockade volume is suppressed, where the interactions of Rydberg atoms shift the atomic states out of resonance with an excitation laser. We consider here the generation of single photon source by using a four-wave mixing scheme in a room-temperature atomic vapor cell. In a homemade micrometer-sized atomic vapor cell, one-dimensional size is smaller than the radius of Rydberg blockade and the other two-dimensional size is limited by the size of focused laser beam. The blockade radius is on the order of a few micrometers, depending on the Rydberg atom states. An excitation blockade effect can be used to realize single photon source in thermal cesium vapor microcells. The micron cesium-cell is used to spatially localize atomic groups, which results in the atomic decoherence time on the order of microseconds or even nanoseconds. This requires a high-power pulsed laser to prepare the Rydberg atomic state at a nanosecond scale. Four-photon excitation schemes with narrow linewidth lasers are also used experimentally. The cesium-Rydberg state can usually be excited by the lasers with optical wavelengths 852 and 509 nm, respectively. The laser system is well-stabilized so that the detuning is small compared with the spontaneous linewidth of Rydberg state, while the laser power and temporal mode need to be specified for ns-time coherence in thermal cesium vapor microcells. The 852 nm laser can be achieved by modulating the continuous laser beam with the help of an electro-optic intensity modulator (EOIM). While this remains a technical challenge for 509 nm laser with ns-laser pulse. There is no EOIM to generate the ns-laser pulse with high power. We demonstrate a novel generation method of 509 nm laser system. In our experiments, a 1018 nm fiber laser is used to produce a continuous laser with a typical linewidth of ～8 kHz and power of 10 mW. The nanosecond pulse is generated with the help of an electro-optic intensity modulator (EOIM) by modifying the continuous laser beam. The peak power of modulated optical pulse is amplified to 4600 W by using a homemade fiber amplifier. The output beam of 1018 nm is then injected into a periodically poled lithium-niobate (PPLN) to generate the second harmonics laser of 509 nm. The typical peak power of 509 nm reaches 173 W by optimizing PPLN phase matching parameters. The pulse repetition frequency of the 509 nm laser can be continuously tuned in a range of 300 kHz–100 MHz, and the pulse width can be continuously tuned in a range of 1–100 ns. Peak power fluctuation of the pulses is about 1.3%. The power 509 nm laser with optimized pulse parameters can be used to excite the cesium atom with GHz bandwidth. Meanwhile the two seed source lasers is well established experimentally, which allows alternating pulses with a different wavelength. This is an essential capability for realizing a single photon source through four-wave mixing.
Single photon source is a non-classical light field with anti-bunching effect, which has a potential applications in the research of fundamental physics problems, quantum precision measurement, quantum communication, quantum computing, etc. The strong interaction between highly excited Rydberg atoms presents an excitation blockade effect. In a dense Rydberg atomic ensemble, the excitation of more than one Rydberg atom within a blockade volume is suppressed, where the interactions of Rydberg atoms shift the atomic states out of resonance with an excitation laser. We consider here the generation of single photon source by using a four-wave mixing scheme in a room-temperature atomic vapor cell. In a homemade micrometer-sized atomic vapor cell, one-dimensional size is smaller than the radius of Rydberg blockade and the other two-dimensional size is limited by the size of focused laser beam. The blockade radius is on the order of a few micrometers, depending on the Rydberg atom states. An excitation blockade effect can be used to realize single photon source in thermal cesium vapor microcells. The micron cesium-cell is used to spatially localize atomic groups, which results in the atomic decoherence time on the order of microseconds or even nanoseconds. This requires a high-power pulsed laser to prepare the Rydberg atomic state at a nanosecond scale. Four-photon excitation schemes with narrow linewidth lasers are also used experimentally. The cesium-Rydberg state can usually be excited by the lasers with optical wavelengths 852 and 509 nm, respectively. The laser system is well-stabilized so that the detuning is small compared with the spontaneous linewidth of Rydberg state, while the laser power and temporal mode need to be specified for ns-time coherence in thermal cesium vapor microcells. The 852 nm laser can be achieved by modulating the continuous laser beam with the help of an electro-optic intensity modulator (EOIM). While this remains a technical challenge for 509 nm laser with ns-laser pulse. There is no EOIM to generate the ns-laser pulse with high power. We demonstrate a novel generation method of 509 nm laser system. In our experiments, a 1018 nm fiber laser is used to produce a continuous laser with a typical linewidth of ～8 kHz and power of 10 mW. The nanosecond pulse is generated with the help of an electro-optic intensity modulator (EOIM) by modifying the continuous laser beam. The peak power of modulated optical pulse is amplified to 4600 W by using a homemade fiber amplifier. The output beam of 1018 nm is then injected into a periodically poled lithium-niobate (PPLN) to generate the second harmonics laser of 509 nm. The typical peak power of 509 nm reaches 173 W by optimizing PPLN phase matching parameters. The pulse repetition frequency of the 509 nm laser can be continuously tuned in a range of 300 kHz–100 MHz, and the pulse width can be continuously tuned in a range of 1–100 ns. Peak power fluctuation of the pulses is about 1.3%. The power 509 nm laser with optimized pulse parameters can be used to excite the cesium atom with GHz bandwidth. Meanwhile the two seed source lasers is well established experimentally, which allows alternating pulses with a different wavelength. This is an essential capability for realizing a single photon source through four-wave mixing.
Through the cascade excitation of 852-nm continuous-wave (CW) laser and 509-nm nanosecond pulsed laser, the electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT) spectroscopic signals of ladder-type three-level cesium atoms with Rydberg state are obtained by using a room-temperature cesium vapor cell. The power of 509-nm pulsed laser beam is ~176 W, while the pulse repetition frequency ranges from 300 kHz to 100 MHz and can be continuously adjusted. The laser pulse duration runs from 1 to 100 ns and can be continuously adjusted. The relationship between Rydberg EIT spectroscopic signals and 509-nm nanosecond pulsed laser parameters is investigated experimentally. By changing the pulse repetition frequency and the pulse duration of the 509-nm nanosecond pulsed laser, the comb-like Rydberg atomic spectrum is obtained by using a room-temperature cesium vapor cell. Within a certain range of repetition frequency and pulse duration, the envelope of spectral lines shows a regular pattern, and the spacing between the transmission peaks is consistent with the pulse repetition frequency. By changing the 509-nm laser pulse repetition frequency and pulse duration, atoms with the specific velocity group can be excited to Rydberg state. Reducing the repetition frequency of the 509-nm pulsed coupling laser can further increase the number of atoms in the Rydberg state in comparison with the case of finite velocity group pumping of cesium atoms by a continuous-wave laser. When the repetition frequency of the 509-nm pulsed laser approaches the EIT linewidth, the number of cesium Rydberg atoms can be increased by up to 10 times. In the parameter optimization process, the dynamic characteristics of pulsed excitation in multi-level atoms, as well as the interaction characteristics between arbitrarily shaped laser pulses and multi-level atomic systems, should be considered. Pulsed laser pumping can achieve the interaction between the laser field and atomic group with a specific velocity, and its developed atomic frequency comb spectra can be used for electric and magnetic field measurements. The multi-peak structure of the spectrum can be used to more accurately determine the intensity, frequency, and phase of the microwave electric field by measuring spectral variations. This high-sensitivity and high-resolution measurement capability is crucial for precisely measuring microwave electric fields. The pulsed coupling laser can excite atoms in a specific velocity group to the Rydberg state. High-density Rydberg atoms can improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the measured spectrum, which has potential applications in quantum sensing and quantum measurement based on Rydberg atoms.
Photonic quantum devices based on atomic vapors at room temperature combine the advantages of atomic vapors being intrinsically reproducable as well as semiconductor-based concepts being scalable and integrable. One key device in the field of quantum information are on-demand single-photon sources. Comparable to similar realizations using cold atoms [1], it has been supposed to realize room-temperature single-photon sources by combining the two effects of four-wave mixing and Rydberg blockade [2]. Driving the four-wave mixing cycles in a pulsed manner, single photons are generated on demand. The essential conditions of coherence [3,4] and sufficient Rydberg-Rydberg interaction strengths [5] have already been demonstrated. Up to now, the third condition has been missing: That is performing the excitation cycles in a low-dimensional geometry in order to obtain an excitation blockade of the whole volume by only one Rydberg excitation. We realize this spatial confinement in transversal direction by focusing one of the excitation beams by means of a high-NA lens, and in longitudinal direction by using vapor cells of about one micrometer inner thickness (“µ-cells”). In order to deal with reasonable numbers of atoms in such a small volume, we exploit the fact that in thermal equilibrium there are large numbers of adsorbed atoms on the glass surface. We can easily photo-desorb them shortly before the four-wave mixing cycles and increase by this the optical thickness in the excitation volume by one order of magnitude. By means of these techniques we are now able to generate single photons at 780nm. With a Rydberg blockade radius of 1.0µm and a cell thickness of 1.2µm, we observe pure anti-bunching in the light statistics of the coherent emission field, deviating with a significance of three standard deviations from Poisson-type statistics. We obtain generation efficiencies of currently up to 5% per four-wave mixing cycle, depending on experimental parameters. We systematically investigate the disappearance of the anti-bunching by increasing the cell thickness. The results are also compared to measurements at smaller blockade radii. This technique can be further improved by investigating different Rydberg states or different multi-level schemes which allow exploiting the latest developments in laser research. [1] Y. O. Dudin et al., Science 336, 6083 (2012) [2] M. M. Müller et al., PRA 87, 053412 (2013) [3] B. Huber et al., PRL 107, 243001 (2011) [4] B. Huber et al., PRA 90, 053806 (2014) [5] T. Baluktsian et al., PRL 110, 123001 (2013)
Single-atom-based single-photon source has several advantages, such as narrow bandwidth, wavelength matching with the absorption line of the same atomic ensemble, and insensitivity to the environment disturbing, and it is very important not only for basic researches in quantum optic field but also for applications in quantum information processing. In this paper, we report the generation of a 10-MHz-repetition-rate triggered single-photon source at 852 nm based on a trapped single cesium atom in a far-off-resonance microscopic optical dipole trap (FORT). To generate an optical dipole trap, a far-red-detuned 1064 nm laser beam is tightly focused by using a high numerical aperture lens, a typical trap depth is 2 mK and trap waist is 2.3 m. To obtain a maximum probability of pulsed excitation, the frequency of the pulsed laser should be resonant with the atomic energy levels and the trapped single atom must be excited with a -pulse. However, the interaction between the FORT laser and the atoms causes AC Stark shifts of the atomic energy levels. Thus, in order to demonstrate the resonant pulsed excitation, it is important to calculate and measure the shift of 6S1/2|Fg=4,mF=+4-6P3/2|Fe=5,mF=+5 cyclical transition in the FORT. For a two-level system, the probability of pulsed excitation can be described by Rabi oscillations with a characteristic Rabi frequency . With an optimized time sequence, we experimentally demonstrate the Rabi oscillation between the ground state and the excited state, and the peak power of -pulse laser is about 1.25 mW. We also measure the temporal envelope of single photons after a -pulse excitation. A gated pulsed excitation and cooling technique are used to reduce the possibility that atoms are heated by -pulse laser. The typical trapping lifetime of single cesium atom is extended from~108 ups to~2536 ms. The corresponding number of excitations is improved from 108 to 360000. The second-order intensity correlations of the emitted single-photon are characterized by implementing Hanbury Brown-Twiss setup. The statistics shows a strong anti-bunching with a value of 0.09 for the second-order correlation at zero delay. In the future, we will perform a Hong-Ou-Mandel two-photon interference experiment to analyze the indistinguishability of the single photons. We will also trap single atoms in a magic-wavelength optical dipole trap where the ground and the excited states have the same shift.
The spectra of Rydberg atoms are of great significance for studying the energy levels of Rydberg atoms and the interaction between neutral atoms, especially, the high-precision spectra of Rydberg atoms can be used to measure the energy level shifts of Rydberg atoms resulting from the dipole-dipole interactions in room-temperature vapor cells. In this paper we report the preparation of cesium Rydberg states based on the cascaded two-photon excitation of 509 nm laser and 852 nm laser in opposite, and the measurements of the fine structure of cesium Rydberg states. In this experiment, the 509 nm laser is generated by the cavity-enhanced second-harmonic generation from 1018 nm laser with a periodically-poled KTP crystal and has a maximum power of about 1 W, and the 852 nm probe laser is provided by an external-cavity diode laser with a maximum output power of 5 mW and a typical linewidth of 1 MHz. By scanning the frequency of 509 nm coupling laser, it is presented that the Doppler-free spectra based on electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT) of 509 nm coupling laser and 852 nm probe laser. The velocity-selective EIT spectra are used to study the spectral splitting of 6S1/26P3/257S(D) ladder-type system of cesium Rydberg atoms in a room-temperature vapor cell. The powers of 852 nm probe laser and 509 nm coupling laser are 0.3 upW and 200 mW, respectively. Their waist radii are both approximately 50 m. The intervals of hyperfine splitting of the intermediate state 6P3/2(F'=3, 4, 5) and fine splitting of 57D3/2 and 57D5/2 Rydberg states are measured by a frequency calibrating. Concretely, the velocity-selective spectrum with a radio frequency (RF) modulation of 30 MHz is used as a reference to calibrate the Rydberg fine-structure states in the hot vapor cell, where the RF frequency precision is smaller than a hertz on long time scales and the EIT linewidth is smaller than 13 MHz. The experimental value of the fine structure splitting of 57D3/2 and 57D5/2 Rydberg states is (354.72.5) MHz, that is in consistence with the value of 346.8 MHz calculated by Rydberg-Ritz equation and quantum defects of 57D3/2 and 57D5/2 Rydberg states. The experimental values of hyperfine splitting of intermediate state 6P3/2(F'=3, 4, 5) are also coincident with the theoretical calculated values. The dominant discrepancy existing between the experimental and calculated results may arise from the nonlinear correspondence of the PZT while the 509 nm wavelength cavity is scanned, and the measurement accuracy influenced by the spectral linewidth. The velocity-selective spectroscopy technique can also be used to measure the energy level shifts caused by the interactions of Rydberg atoms.
Nowadays the long-range dipole-dipole interaction between highly-excited Rydberg atoms at micrometer distance become promising way to establish the atom-atom quantum entanglement and to implement the two-qubit logic gate. For alkali metal atoms, single-photon excitation from the ground state to the desired Rydberg state demands powerful narrow-linewidth ultra-violet (UV) laser, which is very challenging. Maybe just because of this, the studies of single-photon Rydberg excitation of alkali metal atoms are rare. Alternatively people have employed the two-photon or three-photon Rydberg excitation scheme. However, comparing with the single-photon Rydberg excitation, the two-photon or three-photon scheme has following drawbacks: atomic decoherence due to the photon scattering from the lower and upper transitions, and light shift of the involved ground state and Rydberg state due to the lower and upper transition laser beams. Thanks to the efficient laser frequency conversion technology with PPXX material and the well-developed commercial fiber laser as well as fiber amplifier, we have implemented a tunable 318.6-nm UV laser system based on the cavity-enhanced second-harmonic generation following the single-pass sum-frequency generation of 1560.5-nm and 1076.9-nm fiber-amplified lasers. More than 2-Watt output of the 318.6-nm UV laser has been achieved with a typical linewidth of smaller than 10 kHz. Employing the UV laser system we have demonstrated a single-photon Rydberg excitation spectroscopy of cesium (Cs) atoms. Partial Cs atoms can be directly excited from 6S_1/2 ground state to nP_3/2 (n = 70 - 100) Rydberg states, and Rydberg excitation spectra are obtained with transmission enhancement of a probe beam locked to Cs 6S_1/2 (F = 4) - 6P_3/2 (F’ = 5) cycling transition because partial population on the ground state (F = 4) are transferred to Rydberg state. The quantum defect for Cs nP_3/2 (n = 70 -100) Rydberg states is determined experimentally. Further more, the demodulated single-photon Rydberg excitation spectrum is employed to stabilize the UV laser to specific Cs Rydberg transition to improve the laser frequency stability. References: [1] Opt. Express 25 (2017) p.22510; [2] J. Opt. 19 (2017) 045501; [3] J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 33 (2016) p.2020; [4] Opt. Commun. 370 (2016) p.150. Funding: the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61475091).
A narrow-linewidth continuous-wave single-frequency tunable 318.6-nm ultraviolet laser system with watt-level output power is developed in our experiment based on well-developed fiber lasers, fiber amplifiers, and efficient laser frequency conversion technique. Cesium 6S1/2—nP3/2 (n = 70—94) single-photon Rydberg excitation in a room-temperature cesium atomic vapor cell is realized by using our ultraviolet laser system. The single-photon Rydberg excitation signal is obtained via the V-type three-level atomic system which contains 6S1/2 (F = 4) ground state, 6P3/2 (F = 5) excited state and one of nP3/2 (n = 70—94) Rydberg states. When cesium atoms populated on the ground state are partially excited to Rydberg state by the ultraviolet laser, absorption of 852.3-nm probe beam which is locked to 6S1/2 (F = 4)—6P3/2 (F ′ = 5) hyperfine transition will decrease. In this way, the cesium Rydberg states are detected. The quantum defects for cesium nP3/2 (n = 70—94) Rydberg states are experimentally measured with a high-precision wavemeter. The variation trend of experimentally measured data deviates from that of calculated values. Due to the fact that the cesium vapor cell is positioned in a magnetic shielding tank, the Zeeman effect can be ignored. Considering that the polarizability of Rydberg atoms is proportional to (n*)7, in which n* is the effective principal quantum number, the Rydberg screen effect of cesium atomic vapor cell cannot completely protect cesium atoms from being perturbed by an external DC electric field. Therefore the residual DC electric field existing inside the cesium vapor cell will have a significant influence on quantum defect measurement of Rydberg atoms. Using the theoretical model of Stark effect and the relationship between polarizability of Rydberg atoms and the effective principal quantum number n*, the corrected experimental value of quantum defect for cesium nP3/2 (n = 70—94) Rydberg states is found to be ~(3.5591 ± 0.0007). The corrected experimental value of quantum defect is consistent with the calculation.