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Optics Express

Photon blockade induced by two-photon absorption in cavity quantum electrodynamics

Ling-Juan Feng, Jia Ni, Shangqing Gong

Published Jan 11, 2024• 15 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Photon blockade (PB) is an important quantum phenomenon in cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED). Here, we investigate the PB effect in the simplest cavity QED systems (one cavity containing first a single atom and then two atoms), where only the atoms are weakly driven. Via the analytical calculation and numerical simulation, we show that the strong PB can be generated even with the weak-coupling regime at the total resonance. This blockade is ascribed to the two-photon absorption, which is fundamentally different from the conventional and unconventional blockade mechanisms. Therefore, our study provides an alternative approach to produce the PB in the atom-driven cavity QED system.

DOI
10.1364/oe.507086

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Photon blockade (PB) is an important quantum phenomenon in cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED). Here, we investigate the PB effect in the simplest cavity QED systems (one cavity containing first a single atom and then two atoms), where only the atoms are weakly driven. Via the analytical calculation and numerical simulation, we show that the strong PB can be generated even with the weak-coupling regime at the total resonance. This blockade is ascribed to the two-photon absorption, which is fundamentally different from the conventional and unconventional blockade mechanisms. Therefore, our study provides an alternative approach to produce the PB in the atom-driven cavity QED system.
We investigate theoretically the model of a cavity-quantum-electrodynamics (QED) system that consists of two two-level atoms coupled to a single-mode cavity in the weak coupling regime, where the system is driven by quantum light. The dynamics behavior of the entire system is tackled in the framework of a cascaded quantum system. We find that the two-photon blockade with two-photon bunching and three-photon antibunching can be obtained even when the strong system dissipation is included. This result shows that our work has potential for realizing entangled photon pairs in a weakly coupled cavity. Moreover, we also analyze the photon statistics of the system in the case of out-of-resonance coupling between cavity and two nonidentical atoms. Here, an unconventional photon blockade effect with suppression of two-photon correlation and enhancement of three-photon correlation can be realized, which shows many quantum statistical characteristics of a cavity QED system in weak coupling.
A two-level system interacting with a cavity field is an important model for investigating the photon blockade (PB) effect. Most work on this topic has been based on the assumption that the atomic transition frequency is resonant with the fundamental mode frequency of the cavity. We relax this constraint and reexamine PB in a more general atom--cavity system with arbitrary atomic and cavity detunings from a driving field. The results show that when the signs of the atomic and cavity detunings are the same, PB occurs only in the strong-coupling regime, but for opposite signs of the atomic and cavity detunings, strong photon antibunching is observed in both the weak- and strong-coupling regimes and a better PB effect is achieved compared with the case when the signs are the same. More interestingly, we find that this PB arises from quantum interference for both weak and strong nonlinearities. These results deepen our understanding of the underlying mechanism of PB and may be help in the construction of single-photon sources with higher purity and better flexibility using atom--cavity systems.
We theoretically study the quantum-interference-induced photon blockade and antiblockade phenomenon in an atom-cavity QED system, where the destructive [constructive] interference between two different transition pathways prohibits [enhances] two-photon excitation. To begin with, we study a single-atom--cavity QED system where the atom or cavity is driven by a coherent pump field. We show that the cavity-driven case will lead to the quantum-interference-induced photon blockade under a specific condition, but such an interference-induced photon blockade cannot be realized in the atom-driven case. This is an important consequence of the pathways possible for the two types of drives. Then, we investigate the two-atom case, and find that an additional transition pathway appears in the atom-driven case. We show that this additional transition pathway results in the quantum-interference-induced photon blockade only when the atomic resonant frequency is different from the cavity mode frequency otherwise antiblockade occurs. Moreover, in this case, the condition for realizing the interference-induced photon blockade is independent of the system's intrinsic parameters, which can be used to generate antibunched photons in both weak and strong coupling regimes.
Waveguide cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) with atomic mirrors is a growing research area of quantum optics and can be applied to quantum information processing. We here study the photon statistics of output fields from a waveguide cavity QED system, in which the waveguide is coupled to quantized mirror atoms and one driven medium atom. Our results show that the photon blockade can occur even for a bad atom cavity with large dissipation and small coupling between the medium atom and the cavity, in contrast to the small dissipation and the strong coupling of the medium atom to the cavity field for the conventional photon blockade or the quantum interference for the unconventional photon blockade in the cavity QED system. Utilizing both the master equation and scattering theories, we derive the condition under which the photon blockade occurs in weakly driven systems. We find that such photon anomalous blockade is due to the quantum Zeno effect and is robust against variations of the medium atom's position within the cavity. Our study paves a way to exploit the photon blockade and single-photon devices via the waveguide cavity QED.
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.
A two-level quantum emitter interacting with a cavity field is an important model for investigating the photon blockade (PB) effect. Most work on this topic relies on the assumption that the emitter transition frequency is resonant with the fundamental mode frequency of the cavity. In this work we relax this constraint and reexamine the PB effect in a more general emitter-cavity system with arbitrary emitter and cavity detunings from a driving field. The results show that when the signs of the emitter and cavity detunings are the same, a PB occurs only in the strong-coupling regime, but for opposite signs of the emitter and cavity detunings, strong photon antibunching is observed in both the weak- and strong-coupling regimes, and better antibunching is achieved compared with the case when the signs are the same. More interestingly, we find that this PB arises from quantum interference for both weak and strong nonlinearities. These results deepen our understanding of the underlying mechanism of PBs and may contribute to the construction of single-photon sources with higher purity and better flexibility using two-level emitter-cavity systems.