The spontaneous decay of a V-type three-level atom placed in a negative-refractive-index waveguide is analyzed. We find that in thin waveguides, highly efficient surface guided modes are supported, which do not occur in positive index waveguides. In addition, at low absorption, the mode density and thus spontaneous emission into particular regular guided modes is enhanced by several orders of magnitude as compared to regular dielectric waveguides. The asymmetries between emission into the different modes and the enhancement of particular guided modes allow to induce strong spontaneous-emission interference between transitions with orthogonal transition dipole moments.
The adjustment of two different selfocs is considered using both exact formulas for the mode-connection coefficients expressed in terms of Hermite polynomials of several variables and a qualitative approach based on the Frank-Condon principle. Several examples of the refractive-index dependence are studied and illustrative plots for these examples are presented. The connection with the tomographic approach to quantum states of a two-dimensional oscillator and the Frank-Condon factors is established.
The construction of exactly solvable refractive indices allowing guided TE modes in optical waveguides is investigated within the formalism of Darboux-Crum transformations. We apply the finite-difference algorithm for higher-order supersymmetric quantum mechanics to obtain complex-valued refractive indices admitting all-real eigenvalues in their point spectrum. The new refractive indices are such that their imaginary part gives zero if it is integrated over the entire domain of definition. This property, called condition of zero total area, ensures the conservation of optical power so the refr…
We report on the demonstration of correlated photon pair generation in quasi-phase-matched superlattice AlGaAs waveguides with a high coincidence-to-accidental ratio (CAR); with a continuous (CW) pump, the observed CAR (>100) is more than two order of magnitudes improvement over previously reported spontaneous down conversion (SPDC) schemes in AlGaAs waveguides with a pulsed pump.
We present a new method to measure the guided, radiated and total decay rates in one-dimensional waveguides. It is also theoretically shown that large modifications of the total decay rate can be achieved in realistic EDFAs and EDWAs with effective mode area radii smaller than ~ 1 micrometer.
A route toward lineshape engineering of Fano resonances in photonic structures is theoretically proposed, which uses dynamic modulation of the refractive index of a microcavity. The method is exemplified by considering coupled-resonator optical waveguide systems. An exact Floquet analysis, based on coupled-mode theory, is presented. Two distinct kinds of resonances can be dynamically created, depending on whether the static structure sustains a localized mode or not. In the former case a single Fano resonance arises, which can be tuned in both frequency and line width by varying the refractive…
We study theoretically two vibrating quantum emitters trapped near a one-dimensional waveguide and interacting with propagating photons. We demonstrate, that in the regime of strong optomechanical interaction the light-induced coupling of emitter vibrations can lead to formation of spatially localized vibration modes, exhibiting parity-time (PT ) symmetry breaking. These localized vibrations can be interpreted as topological defects in the quasiclassical energy spectrum.
An electronically excited atom or molecule located outside but near a planar optical waveguide can decay by spontaneous emission of a photon into a guided mode of the waveguide. We outline a QED theory for calculating the probability for this process and describe general physical insights from that theory. A couple of representative examples are discussed in detail.
This report introduces the Transfer Waveguide (TRANSGUIDE); an ultra-thin flat technology that promises light emitting applications a practical solution to total internal reflection light trapping and diverging emission. By invoking reciprocity, light can be temporarily stored in the form of a virtual-dipole and recovered back again.
We analyze the process of simultaneous photon pair generation and quantum walks realized by spontaneous parametric down conversion of a pump beam in a quadratic nonlinear waveguide array. We demonstrate that this flexible platform allows for creating quantum states with different spatial correlations. In particular, we predict that the output photon correlations can be switched from photon bunching to antibunching controlled entirely classically by varying the temperature of the array or the spatial profile of the pump beam.
We study the multi-periodic oscillations in the spontaneous emission rate of an atom in a medium with refractive index n sandwiched between two parallel mirrors. The oscillations are not obvious in the analytical formula for the rate derived based on Fermi's golden rule but can be extracted using Fourier transforms by varying the system scale while holding the configuration. The oscillations are interpreted as interferences and correspond to various closed-orbits of the emitted photon going away from and returning to the atom. This system provides a rare example that the oscillations can be ex…
We demonstrate a monolithically integrable heralded photon source in a femtosecond laser direct written glass waveguide. The generation of photon pairs with a wide wavelength separation requires a concomitant large birefringence in the normal dispersion regime. Here, by incorporation of side-stress tracks, we produce a waveguide with a birefringence of $1.64\times~10^{-4}$ and propagation loss as low as 0.21 dB/cm near 980~nm. We measure photon pairs with 300~nm wavelength separation at an internal generation rate exceeding $5.05\times10^6$/s. The second order correlations indicate that the ge…
High-efficient and high-purity photon sources are highly desired for quantum information processing. We report the design of a chip-scale hybrid SixNy and thin film periodically-poled lithium niobate waveguide for generating high-purity type-II spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) photons in telecommunication band. The modeled second harmonic generation efficiency of 225% W^(-1)*cm^(-2) is obtained at 1560nm. Joint spectral analysis is performed to estimate the frequency correlation of SPDC photons, yielding intrinsic purity with up to 95.17%. The generation rate of these high-purity …
We extend the generalize conservation law of light propagating in a one-dimensional $\cal PT$-symmetric system, i.e., $|T-1|=\sqrt{R_LR_R}$ for the transmittance $T$ and the reflectance $R_{L,R}$ from the left and right, to a multimode waveguide with either $\cal PT$ or $\cal RT$ symmetry, in which higher dimensional investigations are necessary. These conservation laws exist not only in a matrix form for the transmission and reflection matrices; they also exist in a scalar form for real-valued quantities by defining generalized transmittance and reflectance. We then discuss, for the first tim…
Bragg-reflection waveguides (BRWs) fabricated from AlGaAs provide an interesting non-linear optical platform for photon-pair generation via parametric down-conversion (PDC). In contrast to many conventional PDC sources, BRWs are made of high refractive index materials and their characteristics are very sensitive to the underlying layer structure. First, we show that the design parameters like the phasematching wavelength and the group refractive indices of the interacting modes can be reliably controlled even in the presence of fabrication tolerances. We then investigate, how these characteris…
We analyze spontaneous parametric down-conversion in various experimentally feasible 1D quadratic nonlinear waveguide arrays, with emphasis on the relationship between the lattice's topological invariants and the biphoton correlations. Nontrivial topology results in a nontrivial "winding" of the array's Bloch waves, which introduces additional selection rules for the generation of biphotons. These selection rules are in addition to, and independent of existing control using the pump beam's spatial profile and phase matching conditions. In finite lattices, nontrivial topology produces single ph…
Spontaneous decay of an excited atom in a waveguide is essentially modified by the spatial structure of vacuum reservoir. This is particularly exciting in view of a range of applications for quantum information science. We found out that spontaneous decay can be incomplete, so the time dependence of the excited state population asymptotically approaches to a nonzero value, under the conditions when the atomic transition frequency is larger than the cutoff frequency of a waveguide and far from the vicinities of the cut-offs. Discovered effect is explained by the emergence of the dark state, whi…
Quantum mechanical treatment of light inside dielectric media is important to understand the behavior of an optical system. In this paper, a two-level atom embedded in a rectangular waveguide surrounded by a perfect electric conductor is considered. Spontaneous emission, propagation, and detection of a photon are described by the second quantization formalism. The quantized modes for light are divided into two types: photonic propagating modes and localized modes with exponential decay along the direction of waveguide. Though spontaneous emission depends on all possible modes including the loc…
Periodically-tapered-waveguides technique is an emerging potential route to establish quasi-phase-matching schemes for efficient on-demand parametric interactions in third-order nonlinear materials. In this paper, I investigate this method in enhancing spontaneous photon-pairs emission in fibres and planar waveguides with sinusoidally-varying cross sections. I have developed a general robust quantum model to study this process under continuous or pulsed-pump excitations. The model shows a great enhancement in photon-pairs generation in waveguides with a small number of tapering periods that ar…
We consider a quantum-electrodynamic problem of the spontaneous emission from a two-dimensional (2D) emitter, such as a quantum well or a 2D semiconductor, placed in a quasi-2D waveguide or cavity with subwavelength confinement in one direction. We apply the Heisenberg-Langevin approach which includes dissipation and fluctuations in the electron ensemble and in the electromagnetic field of a cavity on equal footing. The Langevin noise operators that we introduce do not depend on any particular model of dissipative reservoir and can be applied to any dissipation mechanism. Moreover, our approac…
A novel time-domain approach using the momentum operator is used to model spontaneous four-wave mixing in a lossless nonlinear waveguide. The effects of self- and cross-phase modulation on the photon-pair production rate and heralded photon purity are investigated. We show that in the special case where only one half of the photon-pair state is filtered that the generation rate and purity of the heralded photons are unmodified by the presence of self- and cross-phase modulation. The significance of this special case arises when we consider heralded single-photon sources, where future schemes a…
Using quantum theory, we study the propagation of an optical field in an inhomogeneous dielectric, and apply this scheme to traveling optical fields in a waveguide. We introduce a field-atom interaction Hamiltonian and derive the refractive index using quantum optics. We show that the transmission and reflection of optical fields at an interface between different materials can be described with normalized Fresnel coefficients and that this representation is related to the beam splitter operator. We then study the propagation properties of the optical fields for two types of slab waveguides: st…
We investigate the spontaneous emission of a two-level system, e.g. an atom or atomlike object, coupled to a single-end, i.e., semi-infinite, one-dimensional photonic waveguide such that one end behaves as a perfect mirror while light can pass through the opposite end with no back-reflection. Through a quantum microscopic model we show that such geometry can cause non-exponential and long-lived atomic decay. Under suitable conditions, a bound atom-photon stationary state appears in the atom-mirror interspace so as to trap a considerable amount of initial atomic excitation. Yet, this can be rel…
We study a quantum electrodynamics (QED) system made of an two-level atom and a semi-infinite rectangular waveguide, which behaves as a perfect mirror in one end. The spatial dependence of the atomic spontaneous emission has been included in the coupling strength relevant to the eigenmodes of the waveguide. The role of retardation is studied for the atomic transition frequency far away from the cutoff frequencies. The atom-mirror distance introduces different phases and retardation times into the dynamics of the atom interacting resonantly with the corresponding transverse modes. It is found t…
Linear discrete diffraction of light within a waveguide array allows control over the longitudinal spatial profile of light. We propose a method of using this control to effectively modulate the nonlinearity in a spontaneous four wave mixing system. This allows the removal spurious frequency correlations between the generated signal and idler photon pairs. Weaving our method into a recipe for waveguide design, we demonstrate a spectral purity improvement from P = 0.78 to near saturation at P = 0.97, for a simple silicon-on-insulator geometry.
In this paper we show that by suitably tailoring the dispersion characteristics of a Bragg reflection waveguide (BRW) mode, it is possible to achieve efficient photon pair generation over a large pump bandwidth while maintaining narrow signal bandwidth. The structure proposed consists of a high index core BRW with a periodically poled GaN core and periodically stratified cladding made up of alternate layers of $Al_{0.02}Ga_{0.98}N$ and $Al_{0.45}Ga_{0.55}N$. Such photon-pair generators should find applications in realizing compact and stable sources for quantum information processing.
A fully optical method to perform any quantum computation with optical waveguide modes is proposed by supplying the prescriptions for a universal set of quantum gates. The proposal for quantum computation is based on implementing a quantum bit with two normal modes of multi-mode waveguides. The proposed universal set of gates has the potential of being more compact and easily realized than other optical implementations, since it is based on planar lightwave circuit technology and can be constructed by using Mach-Zehnder interferometer configurations having semiconductor optical amplifiers with…
We study the spontaneous emission (SE) of an excited two-level nonrelativistic system (TLS) interacting with the vacuum in a waveguide of rectangular cross section. All TLS's transitions and the center-of-mass motion of the TLS are taken into account. The SE rate and the carried frequency of the emitted photon for the TLS initial being at rest is obtained, it is found in the first order of the center of mass (c.m.) that the frequency of the emitted photon could be smaller or larger than the transition frequency of the TLS but the SE rate is smaller than the SE rate $Γ_{f}$ of the TLS fixed in …
Josephson circuits provide a realistic physical setup where the light-matter fine structure constant can become of order one, allowing to reach a regime dominated by non-perturbative effects beyond standard quantum optics. Simple processes, such as spontaneous emission, thus acquire a many-body character, that can be tackled using a new description of the time-dependent state vector in terms of quantum-superposed coherent states. We find that spontaneous atomic decay at ultrastrong coupling leads to the emission of spectrally broad Schrödinger cats rather than of monochromatic single photons. …
We derive frequency correlation and exit probability expressions for photons generated via spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC) in nonlinear waveguides that exhibit linear scattering loss. Such loss is included within a general Hamiltonian formalism by connecting waveguide modes to reservoir modes with a phenomenological coupling Hamiltonian, the parameters of which are later related to the usual loss coefficients. In the limit of a low probability of SPDC pair production, the presence of loss requires that we write the usual lossless generated pair state as a reduced density operator,…
We theoretically investigate the spontaneous emission of a point--like dipolar emitter located near a two--dimensional (2D) plasmonic waveguide of arbitrary form. We invoke an explicite link with the density of modes of the waveguide describing the electromagnetic channels into which the emitter can couple. We obtain a closed form expression for the coupling to propagative plasmon, extending thus the Purcell factor to plasmonic configurations. Radiative and non-radiative contributions to the spontaneous emission are also discussed in details.
We investigate the entanglement dynamics of two two-level emitters (qubits) mediated by a semiinfinite, one-dimensional (1D) photonic waveguide. The coupling of each qubit to the waveguide is chiral, which depends on the propagation direction of light. The finite end of the waveguide is terminated by a perfect mirror, such that coherent quantum feedback is introduced to the system. We show that the chirally generated entanglement between the qubits can be preserved by controlling the time delay of the feedback. Moreover, when the time delay is negligible, the qubit-qubit reduced system evolves…
