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Physical Review A

Phase-engineered photon correlations in weakly coupled nanofiber cavity QED

Zhiming Wu, Jiahua Li, Ying Wu

Published Mar 12, 2024• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A recent experiment [H. S. Han et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 073604 (2021); see also accompanying online supplemental material] shows that when a three-level $V$-type atom with two closely lying upper states interacts with the same vacuum radiation field, its excited states enable vacuum-induced coupling (VIC) owing to the quantum interference between the spontaneous emission pathways. Here, we propose a feasible scheme for phase-engineered photon correlations in the presence of the VIC in an optical nanofiber (ONF) cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) system. Specifically, we show that a phase-dependent strong photon antibunching with high brightness can be generated in the weak-coupling regime of light-atom interactions. This occurs because of the VIC, leading to both the destructive quantum interference between the different pathways for two-photon excitation and the total closed-loop coupling phase. Different types of purely quantum correlations, such as single- and two-photon blockades, can occur by properly tuning the total closed-loop coupling phase adhering on the VIC, and the switch from photon blockade to photon induced tunneling is revealed as well. On the other hand, the strong photon antibunching can be achieved in a broad driving frequency range, which relaxes the requirement for the driving frequency in the ONF cavity QED system. In addition, we compare the analytical and numerical results of the second- and third-order intensity correlation functions, and they are in good agreement. The present study may provide an alternative route to manipulate the few-photon states and have potential applications in single-photon sources and quantum communications.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.109.033709

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A recent experiment [H. S. Han et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 073604 (2021); see also accompanying online supplemental material] shows that when a three-level VVV-type atom with two closely lying upper states interacts with the same vacuum radiation field, its excited states enable vacuum-induced coupling (VIC) owing to the quantum interference between the spontaneous emission pathways. Here, we propose a feasible scheme for phase-engineered photon correlations in the presence of the VIC in an optical nanofiber (ONF) cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) system. Specifically, we show that a phase-dependent strong photon antibunching with high brightness can be generated in the weak-coupling regime of light-atom interactions. This occurs because of the VIC, leading to both the destructive quantum interference between the different pathways for two-photon excitation and the total closed-loop coupling phase. Different types of purely quantum correlations, such as single- and two-photon blockades, can occur by properly tuning the total closed-loop coupling phase adhering on the VIC, and the switch from photon blockade to photon induced tunneling is revealed as well. On the other hand, the strong photon antibunching can be achieved in a broad driving frequency range, which relaxes the requirement for the driving frequency in the ONF cavity QED system. In addition, we compare the analytical and numerical results of the second- and third-order intensity correlation functions, and they are in good agreement. The present study may provide an alternative route to manipulate the few-photon states and have potential applications in single-photon sources and quantum communications.
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We present an alternative route to realize coherent perfect absorption (CPA) and subnatural narrowing by vacuum-induced coupling (VIC) between excited levels of an atomic ensemble in an optical nanofiber (ONF) cavity quantum electrodynamics (CQED) system. By employing the VIC arising from quantum interference between the spontaneous emission pathways from the upper excited doublet to one common ground state in the three-level VVV-type atoms, a very narrow absorption resonance can be observed in the generated dark-state spectral window owing to quantum destructive interference between the spontaneous emission pathways. The spectroscopic output feature exhibits a reduced linewidth, which is much narrower than both the empty-cavity linewidth and the atomic transition linewidth. As a check, the approximate analytical results for the ONF cavity-output power and linewidth of interest agree well with the numerical simulations. Furthermore, we find that the CPA can be used to probe the existence of the VIC effect. By tuning the relative phase between the two input light fields appropriately, the conversion between the CPA and coherent perfect transmission (CPT) can be realized in both the linear and nonlinear excitation regimes, i.e., the relative phase can switch the ONF CQED system from a perfect photon absorber to a nearly perfect photon transmitter. Also, we analyze the optical bistability of the ONF CQED system and its phase dependence in the nonlinear excitation regime. Such interference control of the CPA-to-CPT (or vice versa) scheme proposed here may have potential applications in optical logical devices for optical computing and quantum information processing.
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Photon antibunching based on a single two-level atom strongly coupled to a single-mode optical cavity has been demonstrated in experiments. Here, we put forward an improved version of such an antibunching by introducing a pump field and a microwave field in the coupled atom-cavity system to form both a three-level $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}$-type transition and closed-loop coupling. Via calculating the zero-time-delay second-order correlation function g(2)(0){g}^{(2)}(0)g(2)(0) of the single-mode cavity field, we find that a complete photon blockade, namely, g(2)(0)=0{g}^{(2)}(0)=0g(2)(0)=0, can be well achieved without detuning the driving and cavity resonance. In addition, it is clearly shown that this strong photon antibunching effect appears in the weak-coupling regime of light-atom interactions. The enhanced photon antibunching is ascribed to quantum interference between the two transition paths from the three-level $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}$ atom weakly coupled to the three involved fields (cavity, pump, and microwave). Our proposal is useful for the single-photon generation by photon blockade, which has applications in quantum information processing.
Interference-induced photon antibunching is investigated for a three-level system coupled to a cavity mode, in which the level scheme is of a lambda type. One of the transitions is weakly coupled to the cavity mode while the other is driven by a control field. Without the control field, i.e. , in the conventional cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) scheme in the weak coupling regime, photon antibunching can be achieved by carefully choosing the coupling strength and the detuning. This condition can be alleviated by tuning the strength and the frequency of the control field. The condition for the optimal control field that yields photon blockade is derived, and the effects of changing various parameters are investigated. For a given a set of dissipation rates, the atom-cavity coupling strength g needs to be higher than a certain threshold value, although the whole system still remains in the weak coupling regime. A numerical method for finding the optimal parameter regime is proposed.
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