Single Photons under Control

Wei‐Bin Yan, Heng Fan

We study controllable single-photon transport in a one-dimensional waveguide with a nonlinear dispersion relation coupled to a three-level emitter in a cascade configuration. An extra cavity field is introduced to drive one of the level transitions of the emitter. In the resonance case, when the extra cavity does not contain photons, the input single photon will be reflected; when the cavity contains one photon, the full transmission of the input single photon can be obtained. In the off-resonance case, the single-photon transport can also be controlled by the parameters of the cavity. Therefore, we show that single-photon transport can be controlled by an extra cavity field.

M. Bertolotti

Itay Shomroni, Serge Rosenblum, Yulia Lovsky +3 more

The prospect of quantum networks, in which quantum information is carried by single photons in photonic circuits, has long been the driving force behind the effort to achieve all-optical routing of single photons. We realized a single-photon-activated switch capable of routing a photon from any of its two inputs to any of its two outputs. Our device is based on a single atom coupled to a fiber-coupled, chip-based microresonator. A single reflected control photon toggles the switch from high reflection (R ~ 65%) to high transmission (T ~ 90%), with an average of ~1.5 control photons per switching event (~3, including linear losses). No additional control fields are required. The control and target photons are both in-fiber and practically identical, making this scheme compatible with scalable architectures for quantum information processing.

Barry C. Sanders, Jelena Vuckovic A, Philippe Grangier

T. B. Pittman, Michael J. Fitch, B. C. Jacobs +1 more

We report a proof-of-principle demonstration of a probabilistic controlled-NOT gate for single photons. Single-photon control and target qubits were mixed with a single ancilla photon in a device constructed using only linear optical elements. The successful operation of the controlled-NOT gate relied on post-selected three-photon interference effects which required the detection of the photons in the output modes.