We investigate the generation of nonlinear operators with single photon sources, linear optical elements and appropriate measurements of auxiliary modes. We provide a framework for the construction of useful single-mode and two-mode quantum gates necessary for all-optical quantum information processing. We focus our attention generally on using minimal physical resources while providing a transparent and algorithmic way of constructing these operators.
Strong nonlinearity at the single photon level represents a crucial enabling tool for optical quantum technologies. Here we report on experimental implementation of a strong Kerr nonlinearity by measurement-induced quantum operations on weak quantum states of light. Our scheme coherently combines two sequences of single photon addition and subtraction to induce a nonlinear phase shift at the single photon level. We probe the induced nonlinearity with weak coherent states and characterize the output non-Gaussian states with quantum state tomography. The strong nonlinearity is clearly witnessed …
We describe a scheme for producing an optical nonlinearity using an interaction with one or more ancilla two-level atomic systems. The nonlinearity, which can be implemented using high efficiency fluorescence shelving measurements, together with general linear transformations is sufficient for simulating arbitrary Hamiltonian evolution on a Fock state qudit. We give two examples of the application of this nonlinearity, one for the creation of nonlinear phase shifts on optical fields as required in single photon quantum computation schemes, and the other for the preparation of optical Schroding…
Measurement-induced nonclassical effects in a two-mode interferometer are investigated theoretically using numerical simulations and analytical results. We demonstrate that for certain parameters measurements within the interferometer lead to the occurrence of two-mode squeezing. The results strongly depend on the detection probability, the phase inside the interferometer, and the choice of the input states. The appropriate parameters for maximized squeezing are obtained. We analyze the influence of losses and confirm that the predicted effects are within reach of current experimental techniqu…
We propose and experimentally realize a new scheme for universal phase-insensitive optical amplification. The presented scheme relies only on linear optics and homodyne detection, thus circumventing the need for nonlinear interaction between a pump field and the signal field. The amplifier demonstrates near optimal quantum noise limited performance for a wide range of amplification factors.
Quantum control of phonons has being become a focus of attention for developing quantum technologies. Here, we propose a proposal to realize phonon blockade in a quadratically coupled optomechanical system, where a strong nonlinear interaction between photons and phonons can be induced by an external field coherently driving the cavity, and the effective coupling strength is tunable by adjusting the amplitude of the driving field. This optically induced nonlinearity is different from standard methods for realization of phonon blockade, where the nonlinearity is achieved by coupling the mechani…
Although universal continuous-variable quantum computation cannot be achieved via linear optics (including squeezing), homodyne detection and feed-forward, inclusion of ideal photon counting measurements overcomes this obstacle. These measurements are sometimes described by arrays of beam splitters to distribute the photons across several modes. We show that such a scheme cannot be used to implement ideal photon counting and that such measurements necessarily involve nonlinear evolution. However, this requirement of nonlinearity can be moved "off-line," thereby permitting universal continuous-…
Optomechanically induced transparency in the presence of a strong Duffing nonlinearity
Beijing Computational Science Research Center（北京计算科学研究中心）；Department of Physics, Beijing Normal University（北京师范大学物理学院）；Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院理论物理研究所）；School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学物理科学学院）
An interacting cigar-shaped Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) inside a driven optical cavity exhibits an intrinsic cross-Kerr (CK) nonlinearity due to the interaction with the optical mode of the cavity. Although the CK coupling is much weaker than those of the radiation pressure and the atom-atom interactions, it can affect the bistability behavior of the system when the intensity of the laser pump is strong enough. On the other hand, there is a competition between the CK nonlinearity and the atom-atom interaction so that the latter can neutralize the effect of the former. Furthermore, the CK no…
We propose a system composed of a qubit interacting with a quartic (undriven) nonlinear oscillator (NLO) through a conditional displacement Hamiltonian. We show that even a modest nonlinear perturbation in the NLO potential can enhance and stabilize the quantum entanglement dynamically generated between the qubit and the NLO. In absence of the nonlinearity the entanglement between the qubit and the oscillator is known to periodically oscillate between 0 and 1, whereas the nonlinearity suppresses the dynamical decay of entanglement once it is generated. While the generation of entanglement is d…
We present the two kinds of experimental results. One is a continuous variable dense coding experiment, and the other is a photon number detector with high linearity response, the so called charge integration photon detector (CIPD). They can be combined together to be a potential tool for implementing the cubic phase gate which is an important gate element to synthesize the measurement induced nonlinearity for photonic quantum information processing.
Photonic crystals doped with resonant atoms allow for uniquely advantageous nonlinear modes of optical propagation: (a) Self-induced transparency (SIT) solitons and multi-dimensional localized "bullets" propagating at photonic band gap frequencies. These modes can exist even at ultraweak intensities (few photons) and therefore differ substantially either from solitons in Kerr-nonlinear photonic crystals or from SIT solitons in uniform media. (b) Cross-coupling between pulses exhibiting electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) and SIT gap solitons. We show that extremely strong correlatio…
Single-photon pairs created in the nonlinear process of spontaneous parametric downconversion form the backbone of fundamental and applied experimental quantum information science. Many applications benefit from careful spectral shaping of the single-photon wave-packets. In this paper we tailor the joint spectral wave-function of downconverted photons by modulating the nonlinearity of a poled crystal without affecting the phase-matching conditions. We designed a crystal with a Gaussian nonlinearity profile and confirmed successful wave-packet shaping by two-photon interference experiments. We …
In recent years, material-induced noise arising from defects has emerged as an impediment to quantum-limited measurement in systems ranging from microwave qubits to gravity wave interferometers. As experimental systems push to ever smaller dimensions, extrinsic system properties can affect its internal material dynamics. In this paper, we identify surprising new regimes of material physics (defect-phonon and defect-defect dynamics) that are produced by dimensional confinement. Our models show that a range of tell-tale signatures, encoded in the characteristics of defect-induced noise, dissipat…
We study enhanced sensing of optomechanically induced nonlinearity (OMIN) in a cavity-waveguide coupled system. The Hamiltonian of the system is anti-PT symmetric with the two involved cavities being dissipatively coupled via the waveguide. When a weak waveguide-mediated coherent coupling is introduced, the anti-PT symmetry may break down. However, we find a strong bistable response of the cavity intensity to the OMIN near the cavity resonance, benefiting from linewidth suppression caused by the vacuum induced coherence. The joint effect of optical bistability and the linewidth suppression is …
We present a proposal to produce bipartite and tripartite entanglement in a hybrid magnon-cavity QED system. Two macroscopic yttrium iron garnet (YIG) spheres are coupled to a single-mode microwave cavity via magnetic dipole interaction, while the cavity photons are generated via the two photon process induced by a pump field. Using the mean field theory, we show that the second order nonlinearity can result in strong bipartite entanglement between cavity photons and magnonic modes under two conditions, i.e., $δ_c δ_{m}=2g^2$ and $δ_c=-δ_{m}$. For the later one, we also show the possibility fo…
We have investigated the optical response of superradiant atoms, which undergoes three different damping mechanisms: radiative dissipation ($γ_r$), dephasing ($γ_d$), and nonradiative dissipation ($γ_n$). Whereas the roles of $γ_d$ and $γ_n$ are equivalent in the linear susceptibility, the third-order nonlinear susceptibility drastically depends on the ratio of $γ_d$ and $γ_n$: When $γ_d \ll γ_n$, the third-order susceptibility is essentially that of a single atom. Contrarily, in the opposite case of $γ_d \gg γ_n$, the third-order susceptibility suffers the size-enhancement effect and becomes …
We suggest a scheme to generate a macroscopic superposition state (Schrodinger cat state) of a free-propagating optical field using a beam splitter, homodyne measurement and a very small Kerr nonlinear effect. Our scheme makes it possible to considerably reduce the required nonlinear effect to generate an optical cat state using simple and efficient optical elements.
We report on the generation of a continuous variable Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) entanglement using an optical fibre interferometer. The Kerr nonlinearity in the fibre is exploited for the generation of two independent squeezed beams. These interfere at a beam splitter and EPR entanglement is obtained between the output beams. The correlation of the amplitude (phase) quadratures are measured to be 4.0+-0.2 (4.0+-0.4) dB below the quantum noise limit. The sum criterion for these squeezing variances 0.80+-0.03 < 2 verifies the nonseparability of the state. The product of the inferred uncertain…
We propose quantum-mechanical model of a beam splitter with second-order nonlinearity and show that non-classical features such as squeezing and sub-Poissonian photon statistics of optical fields can be generated in output fundamental and second harmonic modes when we mix coherent light beams via such a nonlinear beam splitter.
We point out that individual organic dye molecules, deposited close to optical waveguides on a photonic chip, can act as single photon sources and can also provide localised, giant optical nonlinearities. This new atom-photon interface may be used as a resource for processing quantum information.
Although the strengths of optical non-linearities available experimentally have been rapidly increasing in recent years, significant challenges remain to using such non-linearities to produce useful quantum devices such as efficient optical Bell state analysers or universal quantum optical gates. Here we describe a new approach that avoids the current limitations by combining strong non-linearities with active Gaussian operations in efficient protocols for Bell state analysers and Controlled-Sign gates.
We discuss the optical heterodyne detection technique to study the absorption and dispersion of a probe beam propagating through a medium with a narrow resonance. The technique has been demonstrated for Rydberg Electro-magnetically induced transparency (EIT) in rubidium thermal vapor and the optical non-linearity of a probe beam with variable intensity has been studied. A quantitative comparison of the experimental result with a suitable theoretical model is presented. The limitations and the working regime of the technique are discussed.
A nonrelativistic Hamiltonian describing interaction between a mechanical degree of freedom and radiation pressure is commonly used as an ultimate tool for studying system behavior in opto-mechanics. This Hamiltonian is derived from the equation of motion of a mechanical degree of freedom and the optical wave equation with time-varying boundary conditions. We show that this approach is deficient for studying higher order nonlinear effects in an open resonant opto-mechanical system. Opto-mechanical interaction induces a large mechanical nonlinearity resulting from a strong dependence of the pow…
We study numerically the effects of nonlinearity on the Anderson localization in lattices with disorder in one and two dimensions. The obtained results show that at moderate strength of nonlinearity an unlimited spreading over the lattice in time takes place with an algebraic growth of number of populated sites $Δn \propto t^ν$. The numerical values of $ν$ are found to be approximately $0.15 - 0.2$ and 0.25 for the dimension $d=1$ and 2 respectively being in a satisfactory agreement with the theoretical value $d/(3d+2)$. The localization is preserved below a certain critical value of nonlinear…
Optical fibers have been enabling numerous distinguished applications involving the operation and generation of light, such as soliton transmission, light amplification, all-optical switching and supercontinuum generation. The active function of optical fibers in the quantum regime is expected to be applicable to ultralow-power all-optical signal processing and quantum information processing. Here we demonstrate the first experimental observation of optical nonlinearity at the single-photon level in an optical fiber. Taking advantage of large nonlinearity and managed dispersion of a photonic c…
Giant optical nonlinearity is observed under both continuous-wave and pulsed excitation in a deterministically-coupled quantum dot-micropillar system, in a pronounced strong-coupling regime. Using absolute reflectivity measurements we determine the critical intracavity photon number as well as the input and output coupling efficiencies of the device. Thanks to a near-unity input-coupling efficiency, we demonstrate a record nonlinearity threshold of only 8 incident photons per pulse. The output-coupling efficiency is found to strongly influence this nonlinearity threshold. We show how the funda…
We evaluate the nonlinear coefficient of graphene-on-silicon waveguides through the coincidence measurement of photon-pairs generated via spontaneous four-wave mixing. We observed the temporal correlation of the photon-pairs from the waveguides over various transfer layouts of graphene sheets. A simple analysis of the experimental results using coupled-wave equations revealed that the atomically-thin graphene sheets enhanced the nonlinearity of silicon waveguides up to ten-fold. The results indicate that the purely $χ^{(3)}$-based effective nonlinear refractive index of graphene is on the orde…
We propose how to realize nonreciprocity for a weak input optical field via nonlinearity and synthetic magnetism. We show that the photons transmitting from a linear cavity to a nonlinear cavity (i.e., an asymmetric nonlinear optical molecule) exhibit nonreciprocal photon blockade but no clear nonreciprocal transmission. Both nonreciprocal transmission and nonreciprocal photon blockade can be observed, when one or two auxiliary modes are coupled to the asymmetric nonlinear optical molecule to generate an artificial magnetic field. Similar method can be used to create and manipulate nonreciproc…
Strong nanomechanical Duffing nonlinearity and interactions induced through cavity optomechanics
AMOLF；Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Quantum Biotechnology (QUBIC), School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Queensland（昆士兰大学数学与物理学院量子生物技术卓越中心）
We propose an effective approach for creating robust nonreciprocity of high-order sidebands, including the first-, second- and third-order sidebands, at microwave frequencies. This approach relies on magnon Kerr nonlinearity in a cavity magnonics system composed of two microwave cavities and one yttrium iron garnet (YIG) sphere. By manipulating the driving power applied on YIG and the frequency detuning between the magnon mode in YIG and the driving field, the effective Kerr nonlinearity can be strengthened, thereby inducing strong transmission non-reciprocity. More interestingly, we find the …
Quantum coherent feedback has been proven to be an efficient way to tune the dynamics of quantum optical systems and, recently, those of solid-state quantum circuits. Here, inspired by the recent progress of quantum feedback experiments, especially those in mesoscopic circuits, we prove that superconducting circuit QED systems, shunted with a coherent feedback loop, can change the dynamics of a superconducting transmission line resonator, i.e., a linear quantum cavity, and lead to strong on-chip nonlinear optical phenomena. We find that bistability can occur under the semiclassical approximati…
Nonlinearity-Induced Thouless Pumping in Quasiperiodic Lattices
School of Physical Science and Technology, Lanzhou University（兰州大学物理科学与技术学院）；School of Mathematics and Statistics, Lanzhou University（兰州大学数学与统计学院）；Institute of Fundamental Physics and Quantum Technology, Ningbo University（宁波大学基础物理与量子技术研究所）
We report the experimental observation of strong two-color optical nonlinearity in an ultracold gas of $^{85}\mathrm{Rb}$-$^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ atom mixture. By simultaneously coupling two probe transitions of $^{85}$Rb and $^{87}$Rb atoms to Rydberg states in electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) configurations, we observe significant suppression of the transparency resonance for one probe field when the second probe field is detuned at $\sim1~\mathrm{GHz}$ and hitting the EIT resonance of the other isotope. Such a cross-absorption modulation to the beam propagation dynamics can be desc…
