Vibrational resonance (VR) is a nonlinear phenomenon in which the system response to a weak signal can be resonantly enhanced by applying a high-frequency modulation signal with an appropriate amplitude. The majority of VR research has focused on amplifying the amplitude or intensity of the system response to a weak signal, whereas the study of the phase information of system responses in VR remains limited. Here, we investigate the VR phenomena in both amplitude and phase quadratures of an optical field in a Kerr nonlinear cavity driven by a near-resonant weak signal and a far-detuned modulation signal. Analytical and numerical results demonstrated that the resonant enhancement in the amplitude and phase quadratures of the system response to a weak signal simultaneously occurs as the amplitude of the modulation signal is varied. There is a linear relation between the amplitude and frequency of the modulation signal for achieving an optimal VR effect. Furthermore, we generalized our study to investigate the quadrature at an arbitrary phase and determined that the VR enhancement sensitively depends on the phase. Our findings not only broaden the scope of VR research by incorporating phase information but also introduces an approach for amplifying an optical field by manipulating another optical field.
Nonclassical light sources, such as correlated photon-pairs, play an important role in quantum optics and quantum information processing systems. This study proposes a process to generate antibunched photon-pairs in a nondegenerate optical parametric oscillator. It is found that when the parameters of the system satisfy certain conditions, the generated photons in subharmonic modes exhibit a strong antibunching behavior and are strongly correlated with one another. In particular, the average photon-pair number is resonantly enhanced. It is also observed that the conventional photon blockade contributes to this phenomenon. In addition, it is interesting to note that fundamental mode photons can blockade the subharmonic mode photons. We refer to this phenomenon as a heterogeneous photon blockade.
We study the interaction between a quantum-dot and a bi-mode micro/nano-optical cavity composed of second-order nonlinear materials. Compared with the Jaynes-Cummings (J-C) model, except for a coherent weak driving field, a strong pump light illuminates the two-mode optical cavity. Analytical results indicate that the model exhibits abundant non-classical optical phenomena, such as conventional photon blockade induced by the nonlinear interaction between polaritons. It constitutes unconventional photon blockade induced by quantum interference due to parametric driving. We compare the photon statistical properties and average photon number of the proposed model, J-C model, and double-mode driven optical cavity under the same parameters and the proposed model can obtain stronger antibunching photons and higher average photon number.
Hui Wang, Yu-Ming He, Tung Hsun Chung, Hai Hu, Ying Yu, Si Chen, Xing Ding, Ming-Cheng Chen, Jian Qin, Xiaoxia Yang, Run-Ze Liu, Zhao-Chen Duan, Jin-Peng Li, Stefan Gerhardt, Karol Winkler, Jonathan Jurkat, Lin-Jun Wang, Niels Gregersen, Yong-Heng Huo, Qing Dai, et al (4) An optimal single-photon source should deterministically deliver one and only one photon at a time, with no trade-off between the source's efficiency and the photon indistinguishability. However, all reported solid-state sources of indistinguishable single photons had to rely on polarization filtering which reduced the efficiency by 50%, which fundamentally limited the scaling of photonic quantum technologies. Here, we overcome this final long-standing challenge by coherently driving quantum dots deterministically coupled to polarization-selective Purcell microcavities--two examples are narrowband, elliptical micropillars and broadband, elliptical Bragg gratings. A polarization-orthogonal excitation-collection scheme is designed to minimize the polarization-filtering loss under resonant excitation. We demonstrate a polarized single-photon efficiency of 0.60+/-0.02 (0.56+/-0.02), a single-photon purity of 0.975+/-0.005 (0.991+/-0.003), and an indistinguishability of 0.975+/-0.006 (0.951+/-0.005) for the micropillar (Bragg grating) device. Our work provides promising solutions for truly optimal single-photon sources combining near-unity indistinguishability and near-unity system efficiency simultaneously.
Yu-Hao Deng, Hui Wang, Xing Ding, Z.-C. Duan, Jian Qin, M.-C. Chen, Yu He, Yu-Ming He, Jin-Peng Li, Yu-Huai Li, Li-Chao Peng, E. S. Matekole, Tim Byrnes, C. Schneider, M. Kamp, Da-Wei Wang, Jonathan P. Dowling, Sven Höfling, Chao-Yang Lu, Marlan O. Scully, et al (1) We report an experiment to test quantum interference, entanglement and nonlocality using two dissimilar photon sources, the Sun and a semiconductor quantum dot on the Earth, which are separated by 150 million kilometers. By making the otherwise vastly distinct photons indistinguishable all degrees of freedom, we observe time-resolved two-photon quantum interference with a raw visibility of 0.796(17), well above the 0.5 classical limit, providing the first evidence of quantum nature of thermal light. Further, using the photons with no common history, we demonstrate post-selected two-photon entanglement with a state fidelity of 0.826(24), and a violation of Bell's inequality by 2.20(6). The experiment can be further extended to a larger scale using photons from distant stars, and open a new route to quantum optics experiments at an astronomical scale.
Yu-Ming He, Hui Wang, Can Wang, Ming-Cheng Chen, Xing Ding, Jian Qin, Zhao-Chen Duan, Si Chen, Jin-Peng Li, Run-Ze Liu, Christian Schneider, Mete Atature, Sven Hoefling, Chao-Yang Lu, Jian-Wei Pan Efficient excitation of a single two-level system usually requires that the driving field is at the same frequency as the atomic transition. However, the scattered laser light in solid-state implementations can dominate over the single photons, imposing an outstanding challenge to perfect single-photon sources. Here, we propose a background-free method using a phase-locked dichromatic electromagnetic field with no spectral overlap with the optical transition for a coherent control of a two-level system, and we demonstrate this method experimentally with a single quantum dot embedded in a micropillar. Single photons generated by pi excitation show a purity of 0.988(1) and indistinguishability of 0.962(6). Further, the phase-coherent nature of the two-color excitation is captured by the resonance-fluorescence intensity dependence on the relative phase between the two pulses. Our two-color excitation method adds a useful toolbox to the study of atom-photon interaction, and the generation of spectrally isolated indistinguishable single photons.
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.
A scalable on-chip single-photon source at telecommunications wavelengths is an essential component of quantum communication networks. In this work, we numerically construct a pulse-regulated single-photon source based on an optical parametric amplifier in a nanocavity. Under the condition of pulsed excitation, we study the photon statistics of the source using the Monte Carlo wave-function method. The results show that there exits an optimum excitation pulse width for generating high-purity single photons, while the source brightness increases monotonically with increasing excitation pulse width. More importantly, our system can be operated resonantly and we show that in this case the oscillations in $g^{(2)}(0)$ is completely suppressed.
Yu-Ming He, Hui Wang, Stefan Gerhardt, Karol Winkler, Jonathan Jurkat, Ying Yu, Ming-Cheng Chen, Xing Ding, Si Chen, Jin Qian, Zhao-Chen Duan, Jin-Peng Li, Lin-Jun Wang, Yong-Heng Huo, Siyuan Yu, Sven Höfling, Chao-Yang Lu, Jian-Wei Pan The key challenge to scalable optical quantum computing, boson sampling, and quantum metrology is sources of single photons with near-unity system efficiency and simultaneously near-perfect indistinguishability in all degrees of freedom (including spectral, temporal, spatial, and polarization). However, previous high-indistinguishability solid-state single-photon sources had to rely on polarization filtering that reduced the system efficiency by at least 50%. Here, we overcome this challenge by developing a new single-photon source based on a coherently driven quantum dot embedded in an elliptical micropillar. The asymmetric cavity lifts the polarization degeneracy into two orthogonal linearly polarized modes with a suitable energy separation. We design an excitation-collection scheme that allows the creation and collection of single photons with an indistinguishability of 0.976(1) and a degree of polarization of 91%. Our method provides a solution of combining near-unity system efficiency and indistinguishability compatible with background-free resonant excitation, and opens the way to truly optimal single-photon sources for scalable photonic quantum technologies.
In this study, we investigate the phonon antibunching effect in a coupled nonlinear micro/nanoelectromechanical system (MEMS/NEMS) resonator at a finite temperature. In the weak driving limit, the optimal condition for phonon antibunching is given by solving the stationary Liouville-von Neumann master equation. We show that at low temperature, the phonon antibunching effect occurs in the regime of weak nonlinearity and mechanical coupling, which is confirmed by analytical and numerical solutions. We also find that thermal noise can degrade or even destroy the antibunching effect for different mechanical coupling strengths. Furthermore, a transition from strong antibunching to bunching for phonon correlation has been observed in the temperature domain. Finally, we find that a suitably strong driving in the finite-temperature case would help to preserve an optimal phonon correlation against thermal noise.
Hui Wang, Z.-C. Duan, Y.-H. Li, Si Chen, J.-P. Li, Y.-M. He, M.-C. Chen, Yu He, X. Ding, Cheng-Zhi Peng, Christian Schneider, Martin Kamp, Sven Höfling, Chao-Yang Lu, Jian-Wei Pan By pulsed s-shell resonant excitation of a single quantum dot-micropillar system, we generate long streams of a thousand of near transform-limited single photons with high mutual indistinguishability. Hong-Ou-Mandel interference of two photons are measured as a function of their emission time separation varying from 13 ns to 14.7 \mus, where the visibility slightly drops from 95.9(2)% to a plateau of 92.1(5)% through a slow dephasing process occurring at time scale of 0.7 \mus. Temporal and spectral analysis reveal the pulsed resonance fluorescence single photons are close to transform limit, which are readily useful for multi-photon entanglement and interferometry experiments.
Xing Ding, Yu He, Z.-C. Duan, Niels Gregersen, M.-C. Chen, S. Unsleber, S. Maier, Christian Schneider, Martin Kamp, Sven Höfling, Chao-Yang Lu, Jian-Wei Pan Scalable photonic quantum technologies require on-demand single-photon sources with simultaneously high levels of purity, indistinguishability, and efficiency. These key features, however, have only been demonstrated separately in previous experiments. Here, by s-shell pulsed resonant excitation of a Purcell-enhanced quantum dot-micropillar system, we deterministically generate resonance fluorescence single photons which, at pi pulse excitation, have an extraction efficiency of 66%, single-photon purity of 99.1%, and photon indistinguishability of 98.5%. Such a single-photon source for the first time combines the features of high efficiency and near-perfect levels of purity and indistinguishabilty, and thus open the way to multi-photon experiments with semiconductor quantum dots.
In this work we theoretically investigate a hybrid system of two optomechanically coupled resonators, which exhibits induced transparency. This is realized by coupling an optical ring resonator to a toroid. In the semiclassical analyses, the system displays bistabilities, isolated branches (isolas) and self-sustained oscillation dynamics. Furthermore, we find that the induced transparency transparency window sensitively relies on the mechanical motion. Based on this fact, we show that the described system can be used as a weak force detector and the optimal sensitivity can beat the standard quantum limit without using feedback control or squeezing under available experimental conditions.
A new entangled quantum state is introduced by applying local coherent superposition (ra^+ +ta) of photon subtraction and addition to each mode of even entangled coherent state (EECS) and the properties of entanglement are investigated. It is found that the Shchukin-Vogel inseparability, the degree of entanglement and the average fidelity of quantum teleportation of the EECS can be improved due to the coherent superposition operation. The effects of improvement by coherent superposition operation are better than those by single (a^+) and two-photon (a^+ b^+) addition operations under a small region of amplitude.
When a three-level atomic wavepacket is obliquely incident on a "edium slab" consisting of two far-detuned laser beams, there exists lateral shift between reflection and incident points at the surface of a "medium slab", analogous to optical Goos-Hanchen effect. We evaluate lateral shifts for reflected and transmitted waves via expansion of reflection and transmission coefficients, in contrast to the stationary phase method. Results show that lateral shifts can be either positive or negative dependent on the incident angle and the atomic internal state. Interestingly, a giant lateral shift of transmitted wave with high transmission probability is observed, which is helpful to observe such lateral shifts experimentally. Different from the two-level atomic wave case, we find that quantum interference between different atomic states plays crucial role on the transmission intensity and corresponding lateral shifts.
Multi-color entangled states of light including low-loss optical fiber transmission and atomic resonance frequencies are essential resources for future quantum information network. We present the experimental achievement on the three-color entanglement generation at 852 nm, 1550 nm and 1440 nm wavelengths for optical continuous variables. The entanglement generation system consists of two cascaded non-degenerated optical parametric oscillators (NOPOs). The flexible selectivity of nonlinear crystals in the two NOPOs and the tunable property of NOPO provide large freedom for the frequency selection of three entangled optical beams, so the present system is possible to be developed as practical devices used for quantum information networks with atomic storage units and long fiber transmission lines.
We study the propagation of light in a resonator optical waveguide consisting of evanescently coupled optomechanical crystal array. In the strong driving limit, the Hamiltonian of system can be linearized and diagonalized. In this case we obtain the polaritons, which is formed by the interaction of photons and the collective excitation of mechanical resonators. By analyzing the dispersion relations of polaritons, we find that the band structure can be controlled by changing the related parameters. It has been suggested an engineerable band structure can be used to slow and stop light pulses.
We present a cascaded system consisting of three non-degenerate optical parametric amplifiers (NOPAs) for the generation and the enhancement of quantum entanglement of continuous variables. The entanglement of optical fields produced by the first NOPA is successively enhanced by the second and the third NOPAs from -5.3 $dB$ to -8.1 $dB$ below the quantum noise limit. The dependence of the enhanced entanglement on the physical parameters of the NOPAs and the reachable entanglement limitation for a given cascaded NOPA system are calculated. The calculation results are in good agreement with the experimental measurements.
We have demonstrated an atom-optical lens, with the advantage of a small scale and flexible adjustment of the parameters, realized by a far red-detuned Gaussian laser beam perpendicular to the propagation direction of the cold atomic cloud. The one-dimensional transverse focusing effect of cold atomic clouds at the temperature order of 1 $\mu$K freely falling through the atom-optical lens on the micron scale have been studied theoretically and then verified experimentally. It is found that theory and experiment are in good agreement.
By introducing the thermo entangled state representation, we convert the calculation of Wigner function (WF) of density operator to an overlap between "two pure" states in a two-mode enlarged Fock space. Furthermore, we derive a new WF evolution formula of any initial state in self-Kerr Medium with photon loss and find that the photon number distribution for any initial state is independent of the coupling factor with Kerr Medium, where the number state is not affected by the Kerr nonlinearity and evolves into a density operator of binomial distribution.
We theoretically study the effect of atomic nonlinearity on the tunneling time in the case of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) traversing the laser-induced potential barrier. The atomic nonlinearity is controlled to appear only in the region of the barrier by employing the Feshbach resonance technique to tune interatomic interaction in the tunneling process. Numerical simulation shows that the atomic nonlinear effect dramatically changes the tunneling behavior of the BEC matter wave packet, and results in the violation of Hartman effect and the occurrence of negative tunneling time.
We consider the propagation of a matter wavepacket of two-level atoms through a square potential created by a super-Gaussian laser beam. We explore the matter wave analog of Goos-Hänchen shift within the framework of atom optics where the roles of atom and light is exchanged with respect to conventional optics. Using a vector theory, where atoms are treated as particles possessing two internal spin components, we show that not only large negative but also large positive Goos-Hänchen shifts can occur in the reflected atomic beam.
Braneshop, and
the US National Science Foundation.
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