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arXiv:quant-ph/0603083 · Journal of Modern Optics

Scheme for generating a sequence of single photons of alternating polarization

Tatjana Wilk, Holger Specht, S. C. Webster, Gerhard Rempe, Axel Kuhn

Published Aug 21, 2006• 16 citations
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Abstract

Single-photons of well-defined polarization that are deterministically generated in a single spatio-temporal field mode are the key to the creation of multi-partite entangled states in photonic networks. Here, we present a novel scheme to produce such photons from a single atom in an optical cavity, by means of vacuum-stimulated Raman transitions between the Zeeman substates of a single hyperfine state. Upon each transition, a photon is emitted into the cavity, with a polarization that depends on the direction of the Raman process.

DOI
10.1080/09500340600736777

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Single-photons of well-defined polarization that are deterministically generated in a single spatio-temporal field mode are the key to the creation of multi-partite entangled states in photonic networks. Here, we present a novel scheme to produce such photons from a single atom in an optical cavity, by means of vacuum-stimulated Raman transitions between the Zeeman substates of a single hyperfine state. Upon each transition, a photon is emitted into the cavity, with a polarization that depends on the direction of the Raman process.
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A sequence of single photons is emitted on demand from a single three-level atom strongly coupled to a high-finesse optical cavity. The photons are generated by an adiabatically driven stimulated Raman transition between two atomic ground states, with the vacuum field of the cavity stimulating one branch of the transition, and laser pulses deterministically driving the other branch. This process is unitary and therefore intrinsically reversible, which is essential for quantum communication and networking, and the photons should be appropriate for all-optical quantum information processing.
Summary form only given. Many attempts to realize elementary quantum-logic gates as well as the feasible schemes for quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation are based on the availability of a single photon in a well defined mode of the radiation field. However, most employed schemes used for photon generation rely on spontaneous processes or on parametric down conversion and produce photons at more or less random times. Only recently, different photon generation schemes have been demonstrated, like a single-photon turnstile device, based on the Coulomb blockade mechanism in a quantum dot, the fluorescence excitation of a single molecule or the excitation of single colour centers or quantum dots. All these new schemes emit photons upon an external trigger event. However, the photons are spontaneously emitted into many modes of the radiation field and usually show a broad energy distribution. In contrast to these, our scheme leads to a photon emission into a single mode of the electromagnetic field of a high-Q optical cavity.
We describe a cavity-QED scheme to deterministically generate polarization entangled photon pairs by using a single atom successively coupled to two single longitudinal mode cavities presenting polarization degeneracy. The cavities are initially prepared either in the vacuum state or in a single photon Fock state for each orthogonal polarization. Sharing the same basic elements, the source can operate on different physical processes. For a V -type three-level atom initially prepared in the ground state two implementations of the source are possible using either: i) two truncated Rabi Oscillations, or ii) a counterintuitive Stimulated Raman Adiabatic Passage process. Although slower than the former implementation, this second one is very efficient and robust under fluctuations of the experimental parameters and, particularly interesting, almost insensitive to atomic decay. For a four-level atom in a diamond configuration initially prepared in the upper state, the source can produce entangled photon pairs even in the bad cavity limit via an adiabatic passage process. We have performed Monte Carlo wave function simulations to characterize these sources by means of: i) the success probability P of producing the desired entangled state, ii) the fidelity F in the reduced space of two emitted cavity photons, and iii) the S parameter of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality to quantify the entanglement capability.
We propose a mechanism for producing NNN-photon states on demand leaking from a single-mode optical cavity interacting with a single atom and a laser pulse. The number of photons can be chosen because it is determined by the Zeeman substructure of the ground state of the atom and its initial state. The deterministic generation of traveling light of $1\ensuremath{\le}n\ensuremath{\le}2F$ photons is achieved, when a circularly polarized laser pulse completely transfers the atomic population between Zeeman sublevels of the ground hyperfine state FFF through far-detuned Raman scattering, thus producing linearly polarized cavity photons. We describe analytically the evolution of optical field taking into account the spontaneous losses and the cavity damping. We analyze the photon statistics showing that it is close to Poissonian light. We show also that this technique provides a deterministic source of a train of identical multiphoton states with a definite number of photons if a sequence of left- and right-circularly polarized laser pulses is applied. The scheme expands the possibilities for using complex internal states of light to transmit data.