The lack of suitable quantum emitters in silicon and silicon-based materials has prevented the realization of room temperature, compact, stable, and integrated sources of single photons in a scalable on-chip architecture, so far. Current approaches rely on exploiting the enhanced optical nonlinearity of silicon through light confinement or slow-light propagation, and are based on parametric processes that typically require substantial input energy and spatial footprint to reach a reasonable output yield. Here we propose an alternative all-silicon device that employs a different paradigm, namely the interplay between quantum interference and the third-order intrinsic nonlinearity in a system of two coupled optical cavities. This unconventional photon blockade allows to produce antibunched radiation at extremely low input powers. We demonstrate a reliable protocol to operate this mechanism under pulsed optical excitation, as required for device applications, thus implementing a true single-photon source. We finally propose a state-of-art implementation in a standard silicon-based photonic crystal integrated circuit that outperforms existing parametric devices either in input power or footprint area.
Unconventional photon blockade refers to the suppression of multi-photon states in weakly nonlinear optical resonators via the destructive interference of different excitation pathways. It has been studied in a pair of coupled nonlinear resonators and other few-mode systems. Here, we show that unconventional photon blockade can be greatly enhanced in a chain of coupled resonators. Specifically, the strength of the nonlinearity in each resonator needed to achieve unconventional photon blockade is suppressed exponentially with lattice size. The analytic derivation, based on a weak drive approxim…
In the recent publications [Phys. Rev. A 92,023838 (2015)], the unconventional photon blockade are studied in a two-mode-second-order-nonlinear system with nonlinear coupling between the low frequency and high frequency modes. In this paper, we study the unconventional photon blockade in a three-mode system with weakly coupled nonlinear cavities via $χ^{(2)}$ nonlinearity. By solving the master equation in the steady-state limit and calculating the zero-delay time second-order correlation function, we obtain the conditions of strong photon antibunching in the low frequency mode. The numerical …
It is shown that non-centrosymmetric materials with bulk second-order nonlinear susceptibility can be used to generate strongly antibunched radiation at an arbitrary wavelength, solely determined by the resonant behavior of suitably engineered coupled microcavities. The proposed scheme exploits the unconventional photon blockade of a coherent driving field at the input of a coupled cavity system, where one of the two cavities is engineered to resonate at both fundamental and second harmonic frequencies, respectively. Remarkably, the unconventional blockade mechanism occurs with reasonably low …
We have observed the unconventional photon blockade effect for microwave photons using two coupled superconducting resonators. As opposed to the conventional blockade, only weakly nonlinear resonators are required. The blockade is revealed through measurements of the second order correlation function $g^{(2)}(t)$ of the microwave field inside one of the two resonators. The lowest measured value of $g^{(2)}(0)$ is 0.4 for a resonator population of approximately $10^{-2}$ photons. The time evolution of $g^{(2)}(t)$ exhibits an oscillatory behavior, which is characteristic of the unconventional p…
We analyze the photon correlations in an optomechanical system containing two nonlinear optical modes and one mechanical mode which are coupled via a three-mode mixing. Under a weak driving condition, we determine the optimal conditions for photon antibunching in the weak Kerr-nonlinear regime and we find that the analytical calculations are consistent with the numerical results. The photon blockade effect is attributed to destructive quantum interference in the two-photon excitation pathways created as a result of the three-mode interaction.
We observe the unconventional photon blockade effect in quantum dot cavity QED, which, in contrast to conventional photon blockade, operates in the weak coupling regime. A single quantum dot transition is simultaneously coupled to two orthogonally polarized optical cavity modes, and by careful tuning of the input and output state of polarization, the unconventional photon blockade effect is observed. We find a minimum second-order correlation $g^{(2)}(0)\approx0.37$ which corresponds to $g^{(2)}(0)\approx0.005$ when corrected for detector jitter, and observe the expected polarization dependenc…
We review the unconventional photon blockade mechanism. This quantum effect remarkably enables a strongly sub-Poissonian light statistics, even from a system characterized by a weak single photon nonlinearity. We revisit the past results, which can be interpreted in terms of quantum interferences or optimal squeezing, and show how recent developments on input-output field mixing can overcome the limitations of the original schemes towards passive and integrable single photon sources. We finally present some valuable alternative schemes for which the unconventional blockade can be directly adap…
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 c…
We propose how to achieve quantum nonreciprocity via unconventional photon blockade (UPB) in a compound device consisting of an optical harmonic resonator and a spinning optomechanical resonator. We show that, even with an extremely weak single-photon nonlinearity, nonreciprocal UPB can emerge in this system, i.e., strong photon antibunching can emerge only by driving the device from one side, but not from the other side. This nonreciprocity results from the Fizeau drag, leading to different splitting of the resonance frequencies for the counter-circulating modes. Such nonreciprocal quantum UP…
We study the unconventional photon blockade, recently proposed for a coupled-cavity system, in presence of input and output quantum fields. Mixing of the input or output channels still allows strong photon antibunching of the output field, but for optimal values of the system parameters that differ substantially from those that maximize antibunching of the intracavity field. This result shows that the specific input-output geometry in a photonic system determines the optimal design in view of single-photon device operation. We provide a compact analytical formula that allows finding the optima…
We show that in laser-driven coupled optomechanical systems, photon antibunching can occur under weak optomechanical coupling, contrarily to common expectation. This unconventional photon blockade originates from destructive quantum interference between different excitation pathways bringing from the ground to two-photon states. Using a quantum open-system approach, we study the antibunching as a function of driving field amplitude, temperature, and pure dephasing rate, and derive optimal values of the system parameters for its occurrence. These values are remarkably close to those characteriz…
In analogy to the Coulomb and the Pauli spin blockade, based on the electrostatic repulsion and the Pauli exclusion principle respectively, the concept of valley blockade in Silicon nanostructures is explored. The valley parity operator is defined. Valley blockade is determined by the parity conservation of valley composition eigenvectors in quantum transport. A Silicon quantum changeover switch based on a triple of donor quantum dots capable to separate electrons having opposite valley parity by virtue of the valley parity conservation is proposed. The quantum changeover switch represents a n…
Photon antibunching is a quantum phenomenon typically observed in strongly nonlinear systems where photon blockade suppresses the probability for detecting two photons at the same time. Antibunching has also been reported with Gaussian states, where optimized amplitude squeezing yields classically forbidden values of the intensity correlation, $g^{(2)}(0)<1$. As a consequence, observing antibunching is not necessarily a signature of photon-photon interactions. To clarify the significance of the intensity correlations, we derive a sufficient condition for deducing if a field is non-Gaussian bas…
We propose how to achieve strong photon antibunching effect in a cavity-QED system coupled with two Rydberg-Rydberg interaction atoms. Via calculating the equal time second order correlation function g(2)(0), we find that the unconventional photon blockade and the conventional photon blockade appear in the atom-driven scheme, and they are both significantly affected by the Rydberg-Rydberg interaction. We also find that under appropriate parameters, the photon antibunching and the mean photon number can be significantly enhanced by combining the conventional photon blockade and the unconvention…
Phonon nonlinearities play an important role in hybrid quantum networks and on-chip quantum devices. We investigate the phonon statistics of a mechanical oscillator in hybrid systems composed of an atom and one or two standard optomechanical cavities. An efficiently enhanced atom-phonon interaction can be derived via a tripartite atom-photon-phonon interaction, where the atom-photon coupling depends on the mechanical displacement without practically changing a cavity frequency. This novel mechanism of optomechanical interactions, as predicted recently by Cotrufo et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 1…
Photon correlations, as measured by Glauber's $n$-th order coherence functions $g^{(n)}$, are highly sought to be minimized and/or maximized. In systems that are coherently driven, so-called blockades can give rise to strong correlations according to two scenarios based on level-repulsion (conventional blockade) or interferences (unconventional blockade). Here we show how these two approaches relate to the admixing of a coherent state with a quantum state such as a squeezed state for the simplest and most recurrent case. The emission from a variety of systems, such as resonance fluorescence, t…
We study the photon blockade effect in a coupled cavity system, which is formed by a linear cavity coupled to a Kerr-type nonlinear cavity via a photon-hopping interaction. We explain the physical phenomenon from the viewpoint of the conventional and unconventional photon blockade effects. The corresponding physical mechanisms of the two kinds of photon blockade effects are based on the anharmonicity in the eigenenergy spectrum and the destructive quantum interference between two different transition paths, respectively. In particular, we find that the photon blockade via destructive quantum i…
We investigate spin relaxation in a silicon double quantum dot via leakage current through Pauli blockade as a function of interdot detuning and magnetic field. A dip in leakage current as a function of magnetic field on a \sim 40 mT field scale is attributed to spin-orbit mediated spin relaxation. On a larger (\sim 400 mT) field scale, a peak in leakage current is seen in some, but not all, Pauli-blocked transitions, and is attributed to spin-flip cotunneling. Both dip and peak structure show good agreement between theory and experiment.
The photon blockade (PB) effect in emitter-cavity systems depends on the anharmonicity of the ladder of dressed energy eigenstates. The recent developments in color center photonics are leading toward experimental demonstrations of multi-emitter-cavity solid-state systems with an expanded set of energy levels compared to the traditionally studied single-emitter systems. We focus on the case of N = 2 nonidentical quasi-atoms strongly coupled to a nanocavity in the bad cavity regime (with parameters within reach of the color center systems), and discover three PB mechanisms: polaritonic, subradi…
We propose a scheme to realize strong photon antibunching with lower photon nonlinearity in a photonic molecule consisting of two photonic cavities, one of which contains a quantum dot (QD). This strong photon antibunching is attributed to destructive quantum interference effect which suppresses the two-photon excitation of the cavity field. That g^2 (0)~10^(-4) can be achieved with modest QD-cavity coupling strength g=1.1k and cavity tunneling strength J=3k when the system is driven by single laser field. To further reduce the requisite tunneling and make the system tunable, two laser fields …
We study a 2D system of trion-polaritons at the quantum level and demonstrate that for monolayer semiconductors they can exhibit a strongly nonlinear optical response. The effect is due to the composite nature of trion-based excitations resulting in their nontrivial quantum statistical properties, and enhanced phase space filling effects. We present the full quantum theory to describe the statistics of trion-polaritons, and demonstrate that the associated nonlinearity persists at the level of few quanta, where two qualitatively different regimes of photon antibunching are present for weak and …
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 st…
We have theoretically studied the photon statistical properties in a nonlinear whispering-gallery-mode microresonator coupled with two nanoparticles. By tuning the relative position of two nanoparticles, the photon statistical features of the system can be modified remarkably. Interestingly, a controllable switching between unconventional and conventional photon blockade can be realized by manipulating the angular positions of two nanoparticles. We also investigate the influence of the Kerr effect on the second order correlation function and find that there is an optimal choice for the relativ…
Quantum computation relies on accurate measurements of qubits not only for reading the output of the calculation, but also to perform error correction. Most proposed scalable silicon architectures utilize Pauli blockade of triplet states for spin-to-charge conversion. In recent experiments, there have been instances when instead of conventional triplet blockade readout, Pauli blockade is sustained only between parallel spin configurations, with $|T_0\rangle$ relaxing quickly to the singlet state and leaving $|T_+\rangle$ and $|T_-\rangle$ states blockaded -- which we call \textit{parity readou…
Based on the four wave mixing, a three mode nonlinear system is proposed. The single photon blockade is discussed through analytical analysis and numerical calculation. The analytical analysis shows that the conventional photon blockade and unconventional photon blockade can be realized at the same time, and the analytical conditions of the two kinds of blockade are the same. The numerical results show that the system not only has the maximum average photon number in the blockade region, but also can have strong photon anti-bunching in the region with small nonlinear coupling coefficient, whic…
We investigate the single-photon blockade (1PB) in the quasichiral regime of atom-photon interaction that mediates via dissipative environment, where the effective atom-photon interaction is asymmetrical but achiral. The synthetic magnetic current in the closed-loop coupling breaks down the reciprocity of atom-photon interaction, resulting in an asymmetrical and even completely unidirectional effective coupling between two selected quantum states. As an example, we couple the single-atom cavity-QED (cQED) system to a strongly dissipative auxiliary cavity. We find that in the quasichiral regime…
The hybrid microwave optomechanical-magnetic system has recently emerged as a promising candidate for coherent information processing because of the ultrastrong microwave photon-magnon coupling and the longlife of the magnon and phonon. As a quantum information processing device, the realization of a single excitation holds special meaning for the hybrid system. In this paper, we introduce a single two-level atom into the optomechanical-magnetic system and show that an unconventional blockade due to destructive interference cannot offer a blockade of both the photon and magnon. Meanwhile, unde…
In this article we use time-dependent Josephson coupling to enhance unconventional photon blockade in a system of two coupled nonlinear bosonic modes which are initially loaded with weakly populated coherent states, so the evolution is restricted to the manifold of up to two field quanta. Using numerical optimal control, we find the optimal coupling which minimizes the two-photon occupation of one mode, which is actually transferred to the other, while maintains a non-zero one-photon occupation in the same mode. Moreover, we choose the continuous coupling to vanish after the transfer between t…
We propose a new methodology, namely "quantum Zeno blockade," for managing light scattering at a few-photon level in general nonlinear-optical media, such as crystals, fibers, silicon microrings, and atomic vapors. Using this tool, antibunched emission of photon pairs can be achieved, leading to potent quantum-optics applications such as deterministic entanglement generation without the need for heralding. In a practical implementation using an on-chip toroidal microcavity immersed in rubidium vapor, we estimate that high-fidelity entangled photons can be produced on-demand at MHz rates or hig…
We investigate theoretically the model of a cavity-quantum-electrodynamics (QED) system that consists of two two-level atoms coupled to a single-mode cavity in the weak coupling regime, where the system is driven by quantum light. The dynamics behavior of the entire system is tackled in the framework of a cascaded quantum system. We find that the two-photon blockade with two-photon bunching and three-photon antibunching can be obtained even when the strong system dissipation is included. This result shows that our work has potential for realizing entangled photon pairs in a weakly coupled cavi…
Chiral cavity-magnonic system for the unidirectional photon blockade
School of Physics and Information Technology, Shaanxi Normal University（陕西师范大学物理与信息技术学院）；Xi’an Key Laboratory of Optical Information Manipulation and Augmentation（西安光学信息操纵与增强重点实验室）
Quantum nonreciprocal devices have received extensive attention in recent years because they can be used to realize unidirectional quantum routing and noise isolation. In this work, we show that the shift of resonance frequencies of propagating phonons induced by spin-orbit interactions (SOI) of phonons in a rotating acoustic ring cavity can be used to realize nonreciprocal phonon blockade. When driving the cavity from different directions, nonreciprocal single-, two-phonon blockade and phonon-induced tunneling can take place by varying the parameters of the system to an appropriate value. To …
We propose a mechanism of unconventional Rydberg pumping (URP) via simultaneously driving each Rydberg atom by two classical fields with different strengths of Rabi frequencies. This mechanism differs from the general Rydberg blockade or Rydberg antiblockade since it is closely related to the ground states of atoms, i.e. two atoms in the same ground state are stable while two atoms in different ground states are resonantly excited. Furthermore, we find the URP can be employed to simplify some special quantum information processing tasks, such as implementation of a three-qubit controlled phase…
We experimentally and theoretically investigate the spin orbit (SO) field in a physically defined, p type metal oxide semiconductor double quantum dot in silicon. We measure the magnetic field dependence of the leakage current through the double dot in the Pauli spin blockade. A finite magnetic field lifts the blockade, with the lifting least effective when the external and SO fields are parallel. In this way, we find that the spin flip of a tunneling hole is due to a SO field pointing perpendicular to the double dot axis and almost fully out of the quantum well plane. We augment the measureme…
Two-photon blockade without cascade channel in strong light-matter coupling
School of Physical Science and Technology, Lanzhou University（兰州大学物理科学与技术学院）；Key Laboratory for Quantum Theory and Applications of MoE, Lanzhou Center for Theoretical Physics, Lanzhou University（兰州大学理论物理中心量子理论与应用教育部重点实验室）
