We present a time-dependent quantum calculation of the scattering of a few-photon pulse on a single atom. The photon wave packet is assumed to propagate in a transversely strongly confined geometry, which ensures strong atom-light coupling and allows a quasi-one-dimensional treatment. The amplitude and phase of the transmitted, reflected, and transversely scattered part of the wave packet strongly depend on the pulse length (bandwidth) and energy. For a transverse mode size of the order of ${\ensuremath{\lambda}}^{2},$ we find nonlinear behavior for a few photons already, or even for a single photon. In a second step we study the collision of two such wave packets at the atomic site and find striking differences between the Fock state and coherent state wave packets of the same photon number.
We present a time-dependent quantum calculation of the scattering of a few-photon pulse on a single atom. The photon wave packet is assumed to propagate in a transversely strongly confined geometry, which ensures strong atom-light coupling and allows a quasi-one-dimensional treatment. The amplitude and phase of the transmitted, reflected, and transversely scattered part of the wave packet strongly depend on the pulse length (bandwidth) and energy. For a transverse mode size of the order of \ensuremathλ2, we find nonlinear behavior for a few photons already, or even for a single photon. In a second step we study the collision of two such wave packets at the atomic site and find striking differences between the Fock state and coherent state wave packets of the same photon number.
Quantum nonlinearity is an essential ingredient for many quantum technologies, but often the nonlinearity is too weak to be exploited at the few-photon level. However, few photons interacting strongly with single quantum emitters in a waveguide environment can impact a significant nonlinear response, opening up a wide range of photon-photon correlations. Using a waveguide-QED system containing a single atom (treated as a two-level system) chirally coupled to a waveguide, we theoretically investigate two-photon nonlinearities with delay-controlled temporal correlations. We use both matrix product states (MPS) and a frequency-dependent scattering theory approach to analyze the exact population dynamics, as well as the first-order and second-order photon correlation functions in transmission of the system, when pumped by a two-photon Fock-state pulse with a bimodal temporal pulse envelope. The two-photon Fock-state pulses are considered to be either two single photons localized to each peak of the pulse, or both photons delocalized (but correlated) between the two peaks. We consider the regimes of a short, moderate, and (relatively) long distance between the two pulse peaks, comparing the important differences in the temporal correlations with the two types of two-photon pulses. We demonstrate the strikingly different nonlinear features and quantum correlations that occur for uncorrelated and correlated two-photon pairs in experimentally accessible regimes.
In the paper, we employ a wave-function approach to investigate the evolution of a two-photon wave packet propagating in a one-dimensional waveguide coupled to the Jaynes-Cummings (JC) system. We derive and solve, both analytically and numerically, a set of equations of motion governing the quantum state of the system. That allows us to provide real-time analysis of the evolution of the wave packet two-photon joint spectrum (2PJS) and the excitation dynamics of the JC system in the course of its interaction with the two-photon pulse. We demonstrate that the 2PJS and the spectrum of the wave packet scattered from the JC system experience transformation for nonzero atom-cavity couplings. Moreover, using Schmidt decomposition, we show that the scattered photons feature frequency entanglement contrary to the incident ones which are not entangled.
We study the dynamics of a single-photon pulse travelling through a linear qubit chain coupled to continuum modes in a one-dimensional (1D) photonic waveguide. We derive a time-dependent dynamical theory for qubit amplitudes and for transmitted and reflected spectra. We show that the requirement for the photon-qubit coupling to exist only for positive frequencies can significantly change the dynamics of the system. First, it leads to an additional photon-mediated dipole-dipole interaction between qubits which results in the violation of the phase coherence between them. Second, the spectral lines of transmitted and reflected spectra crucially depend on the shape of the incident pulse and the initial distance between the pulse center and the first qubit in the chain. We apply our theory to one-qubit and two-qubit systems. For these two cases, we obtain the explicit expressions for the qubits' amplitudes and the photon radiation spectra as time tends to infinity. For the incident Gaussian wave packet we calculate the line shapes of transmitted and reflected photons.
We present a quantum dynamical study of pulsed few-photon scattering from a single artificial atom, consisting of a two-level system (TLS) or qubit, in a waveguide QED system, directly comparing and contrasting two different quantum theoretical simulation methods: (i) an input-output scattering approach that uses frequency-dependent scattering matrices, and (ii) a matrix product states (MPS) approach, which uses quantum noise operators in time bins and a tensor network technique to solve the time-dependent waveguide function for the entire system. Beginning with pulsed excitation using one-photon and two-photon Fock state pulses, we first show how to compute time-dependent observables with the scattering matrix approach, in terms of frequency integrals that encode the pulse spectrum, including how to extract the population dynamics of the excited quantum emitter, as well as the linear and nonlinear contributions. We present solutions for both symmetric and chiral TLS coupling. We then show how to compute the qubit and field observables in a more direct way using MPS, and obtain the characteristic bird-like shape for the two-photon correlation function at two times, which has been observed in recent experiments. We compare and contrast both of these methods, for one and two-photon excitation pulses, and show excellent agreement. We also present a study of the linear and nonlinear contributions, which can easily be calculated using scattering theory, and show the important role of pulse duration. Finally, we demonstrate the clear advantages of MPS by easily going to higher N-photon excitations, and show selected example population dynamics of up to eight-photon Fock-state pulses, manifesting in clear nonlinear population oscillations during the pulse interaction, similar to classical Rabi oscillations, but with quantum input fields that have a vanishing electric field expectation value.
Abstract We study the dynamics of a single-photon pulse traveling through a linear qubit chain coupled to continuum modes in a one-dimensional (1D) photonic waveguide. We derive a time-dependent dynamical theory for qubits’ amplitudes and for transmitted and reflected spectra. We show that the requirement for the photon-qubit coupling to exist only for positive frequencies can significantly change the dynamics of the system. First, it leads to the additional photon-mediated dipole-dipole interaction between qubits which results in the violation of the phase coherence between them. Second, the spectral lines of transmitted and reflected spectra crucially depend on the shape of the incident pulse and on the initial distance between the pulse center and the first qubit in the chain. We apply our theory to one-qubit and two-qubit systems. For these cases we obtain the explicit expressions for the qubits’ amplitudes and for the photon radiation spectra as time tends to infinity. Specific calculations are performed for superconducting qubits operating in GHz frequency range. For the incident Gaussian wave packet we calculate the line shapes of transmitted and reflected photons.
We present a detailed quantum theory and simulations of few-photon Fock state pulses interacting with a two-level system (TLS) in an open waveguide-QED system. For a rectangular pulse shape, we present an exact temporal scattering theory to derive analytical expressions for the TLS population, using one-photon and two-photon pulses, for both chiral and symmetric emitters. We also derive the stationary (long-time) and time-dependent spectra for one-photon excitation, and show how these differ at a fundamental level when considering TLS population effects. Numerically, we also present matrix product state (MPS) simulations, which allow us to compute more general photon correlation functions for arbitrary quantum pulses, and we use this approach to also show results for Gaussian quantum pulses and to confirm the accuracy of our analytical solutions. In the case of a chiral TLS, we show how a one-photon pulse, of any temporal shape, yields a transmitted long-time spectrum that is identical to the input pulse, despite significant TLS population effects. However, the dynamical spectra and spectral intensity show rich population effects, allowing for their detection in spectroscopic experiments. We also show the striking differences between one-photon and two-photon excitation, where the latter shows clear signatures of nonlinear saturation effects. In addition, we demonstrate how significant population TLS dynamics also occur for pulses that are relatively long compared to the radiative decay time (showing that a weak excitation approximation, which neglects finite TLS population effects, cannot be made) and investigate the population signatures, nonlinear features and dynamical behavior as a function of quantum pulse length.