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Phase-Controlled Tunable Unconventional Photon Blockade in a Single-Atom-Cavity System

Hong Li, Ming Liu, Yang Feng, Siqi Zhang, Shengping Ruan

Published Nov 19, 2023• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In the past few years, cavity optomechanical systems have received extensive attention and research and have achieved rapid development both theoretically and experimentally. The systems play an important role in many fields, such as quantum information processing, optomechanical storage, high-precision measurement, macroscopic entanglement, ultrasensitive sensors and so on. Photon manipulation has always been one of the key tasks in quantum information science and technology. Photon blockade is an important way to realize single photon sources and plays an important role in the field of quantum information. Due to the nonlinear coupling of the optical force system, the energy level is not harmonic, resulting in a photon blockade effect. In this paper, we study the phase-controlled tunable unconventional photon blockade in a single-atom-cavity system, and the second-order nonlinear crystals are attached to the cavity. The cavity interacts with squeezed light, which results in a nonlinear process. The system is driven by a complex pulsed laser, and the strength of the coherent driving contains the phase. We want to study the effect of squeezed light and phase. We use the second-order correlation function to numerically and theoretically analyze the photon blockade effect. We show that quantum interference of two-photon excitation between three different transition pathways can cause a photon blockade effect. When there is no squeezed light, the interference pathways becomes two, but there are still photon blockade effects. We explore the influence of the tunable phase and second-order nonlinear strength on the photon blockade effect. We calculate the correlation function and compare the numerical results with the analytical results under certain parameters and find that the agreement is better.

DOI
10.3390/mi14112123

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In the past few years, cavity optomechanical systems have received extensive attention and research and have achieved rapid development both theoretically and experimentally. The systems play an important role in many fields, such as quantum information processing, optomechanical storage, high-precision measurement, macroscopic entanglement, ultrasensitive sensors and so on. Photon manipulation has always been one of the key tasks in quantum information science and technology. Photon blockade is an important way to realize single photon sources and plays an important role in the field of quantum information. Due to the nonlinear coupling of the optical force system, the energy level is not harmonic, resulting in a photon blockade effect. In this paper, we study the phase-controlled tunable unconventional photon blockade in a single-atom-cavity system, and the second-order nonlinear crystals are attached to the cavity. The cavity interacts with squeezed light, which results in a nonlinear process. The system is driven by a complex pulsed laser, and the strength of the coherent driving contains the phase. We want to study the effect of squeezed light and phase. We use the second-order correlation function to numerically and theoretically analyze the photon blockade effect. We show that quantum interference of two-photon excitation between three different transition pathways can cause a photon blockade effect. When there is no squeezed light, the interference pathways becomes two, but there are still photon blockade effects. We explore the influence of the tunable phase and second-order nonlinear strength on the photon blockade effect. We calculate the correlation function and compare the numerical results with the analytical results under certain parameters and find that the agreement is better.
The antibunching effect generated in a cavity containing first a single two-level atomic system and then two identical atoms is explored for off-resonant interactions, in strong- and weak-coupling regimes. The cavity is driven by coherent and squeezed sources. Using the second-order correlation function analytically derived in the weak-excitation regime, we show that squeezed light achieves and improves strong antibunching, leading to a photon blockade. This enhancement is due to a destructive quantum interference mechanism induced by the nonclassical light, creating a supplementary transition pathway. The best effect is obtained for equal frequency detunings in the strong-coupling regime. More interestingly, our investigation reveals that the two-atom-cavity system can further improve the antibunching effect compared to the single-atom cavity. It turns out that the additional couplings appearing in the cavity due to the implementation of the two atoms, combined with the squeezed light, could substantially enhance the photon-blockade effect.
The manipulation of photons is a key technology for obtaining optical quantum information. In this study, we present a phase-modulated optomechanical system comprising two coupled cavity resonators and illustrate the phase-controlled photon blockade in the system. The coupling phase of the cavities reveals the interference of photons and introduces an unconventional photon-blockade effect. We also study the influence of the energy level fineness on the photon blockade and resonant frequency of the mechanical mode. Numerical simulations demonstrate that photon blockade can occur over a wide range of system parameters. These results have several implications for understanding the role of the state phase in quantum cavity optomechanics and provide a promising method for the realization of optomechanical quantum devices using photon blockade.
Abstract Quantum information processing, a key component of quantum information science, has attracted considerable attention. Its realization requires physical platforms and resources, among which optical systems and single-photon sources based on photon blockade (PB) have been widely employed. Here we investigate PB behaviors in a coupled optical cavity system driven by both single- and two-photon fields. The optimal conditions for PB are obtained with respect to the two-photon driving strength and cavity-laser detuning via analytical calculations. Using these optimal solutions, we show that a significant PB effect is achievable even with weak Kerr nonlinearity, and confirm that this behavior corresponds to unconventional PB (UPB) through a comparison of the second- and third-order correlation functions. Furthermore, our analysis reveals that UPB can be enhanced by two-photon dissipation. These results provide theoretical strategies for enhancing UPB, and offer insight into its fundamental mechanism.
We theoretically investigate the quantum-interference-induced photon blockade effect in a single two-level atom-cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) system with degenerate parametric amplification. The analytical calculations reveal the optimal parametric gain and phase parameters for achieving optimum unconventional photon blockade conditions. Under the optimal parameter regime, the numerical results of the second-order correlation function demonstrate strong photon antibunching consistent with the analytical results. Furthermore, the numerical results corroborate that coherently driving the atom leads to a stronger photon blockade than a coherently driven cavity with the optimal parameters. We numerically demonstrate that the UPB effect is compromised by a non-zero cavity-atom coupling in the cavity-driven configuration. However, stronger photon antibunching can be attained with a non-zero cavity-atom coupling in the atom-driven configuration. This work may be suitable for experimentally realising a strongly antibunched single-photon source for applications in quantum technology.
In a two-frequency cavity driving and atom driving atom-cavity system, we find the photon blockade effect. In a truncated eigenstates space, we calculate the zero-delay second-order correlation function of the cavity mode analytically and obtain an optimal condition for the photon blockade. By including three transition pathways, we find that higher excitations of the cavity mode can be further suppressed and the zero-delay second-order correlation function can be reduced additionally. Based on the master equation, we simulate the system evolution and find that the analytical solutions match well with the numerical results. Our scheme is robust with small fluctuations of parameters and may be used as a new type of single photon source.
In this paper, we show that photon blockade can be observed in a system with weak Kerr nonlinearities. The system consists of two spatially overlapping single-mode semiconductor cavities with tunable one- and two-photon tunneling. We find that both conventional and unconventional single-photon blockades are controllable by manipulating the phase in the hopping regardless of the weakness of nonlinearity. We refer to the photon blockade with weak nonlinearities as an unconventional photon blockade. The unconventional photon blockade effect originates from the destructive interference between different paths from the ground state to two-photon states. We analytically derive the exact optimal conditions for strong antibunching, which are in good agreement with those obtained by numerical simulations. The optimal parameters for photon blockade are derived. Based on these parameters, the semiconductor cavity systems can be used as a single-photon source in regimes of both weak and strong nonlinearities.