发表机构
Harvard University; Michigan Technological University; St. Louis University（哈佛大学; 密歇根理工大学; 圣路易斯大学）
机构由 AI 辅助整理，请以论文原文为准。AI 中文总结
针对介电常数近零材料中传统量子化失效的问题，提出首个有效单激发量子化方法，将线性响应、非线性与损耗统一描述为极化激元，为量子光子学应用奠定基础。
AI 中文摘要
在介电常数近零（ENZ）材料中，实线性介电常数趋近于零，导致位移场的主导阶贡献对电场呈非线性，这使得传统的正则量子化方法变得非常复杂。现有处理方法通常先对线性模式进行量子化，随后引入非线性相互作用，这种顺序在ENZ区域不再适用。在此，我们提供了据我们所知的首次有效的单激发量子化，其中近零线性响应、主导非线性以及损耗共同决定基本激发。利用一个可解的微观原子系统作为理论框架，我们发现该激发是一种极化激元：一种部分场激发和部分物质激发的缀饰准粒子，其系数可由宏观极化率参数化。虽然本工作考虑了主导阶的χ(3)非线性，该框架可推广以包含其他非线性修正，包括可控的二阶极化率χ(2)以及系统的高阶贡献χ(n)（n>2）。我们的发现为量子光子学中的实际应用铺平了道路，例如通过利用零折射率材料固有的强非线性实现单光子非破坏性探测。
英文摘要
In epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) materials, the vanishing real linear permittivity results in the leading-order contribution to the displacement field being nonlinear in the electric field, making conventional canonical quantization approaches highly non-trivial. Existing treatments generally quantize the linear modes first and introduce nonlinear interactions subsequently, an ordering that becomes inadequate in the ENZ regime. Here, we provide, to our knowledge, the first effective single-excitation quantization in which the near-zero linear response, leading nonlinearity, and loss jointly determine the elementary excitation. Using a solvable microscopic atomic system as a theoretical scaffold, we find that this excitation is a polariton: a dressed quasiparticle with partly field and partly material excitations whose coefficients can be parameterized by macroscopic susceptibilities. While this work considers a leading-order $χ^{(3)}$ nonlinearity, the framework could be generalized to include other nonlinear corrections, including a controllable second-order susceptibility $χ^{(2)}$ and systematic higher-order contributions $χ^{(n)}$, $n>2$. Our findings pave the way toward practical applications in quantum photonics, such as single-photon non-demolition detection, by leveraging the strong nonlinearities intrinsic to zero-index materials.
Comments16 pages, 6 figures
