The spontaneous emission is investigated for an effective atomic two-level system in an intense coherent field with frequency lower than the vacuum-induced decay width. As this additional low-frequency field is assumed to be intense, multiphoton processes may be induced, which can be seen as alternative transition pathways in addition to the simple spontaneous decay. The interplay of the various interfering transition pathways influences the decay dynamics of the two-level system and may be used to slow down the spontaneous decay considerably. We derive from first principles an expression for the Hamiltonian including up to three-photon processes. This Hamiltonian is then applied to a quantum mechanical simulation of the decay dynamics of the two-level system. Finally, we discuss numerical results of this simulation based on a rubidium atom and show that the spontaneous emission in this system may be suppressed substantially.
We present an experimental characterization of the statistics of multiple photon pairs produced by spontaneous parametric down-conversion realized in a nonlinear medium pumped by high-energy ultrashort pulses from a regenerative amplifier. The photon number resolved measurement has been implemented with the help of a fiber loop detector. We introduce an effective theoretical description of the observed statistics based on parameters that can be assigned direct physical nterpretation. These parameters, determined for our source from the collected experimental data, characterize the usefulness o…
We describe the emission, detection and structure of multiphoton states of light. We include the effect of frequency filtering, which describes, at a fundamental level, physical detection of a quantum emitter. The case of the spontaneous emission of Fock states is treated fully and analytically. We stress this picture by contrasting it to the numerical simulation of two-photon bundles emitted from a two-level system in a cavity. We show that dynamical factors exist that allow for a more robust multiphoton emission than spontaneous emission. We also describe how this relates to thermal light.
This Letter demonstrates control over multiphoton absorption processes in driven two-level systems, which include for example superconducting qubits or laser-irradiated graphene, through spectral shaping of the driving pulse. Starting from calculations based on Floquet theory, we use differential evolution, a general purpose optimization algorithm, to find the Fourier coefficients of the driving function that suppress a given multiphoton resonance in the strong field-regime. We show that the suppression of the transition probability is due to the coherent superposition of high-order Fourier ha…
We present a scheme, based only on linear optics and standard photon detection, that allows to generate heralded multiphoton entangled states of arbitrary photon number from spontaneous parametric downconversion (PDC) in the weak interaction regime. The scheme also works in the strong interaction regime, i.e., for the production of large photon numbers, when photon-number resolving detectors with nearly perfect quantum efficiency are used. In addition, the same setup can be used for quantum metrology as multiphoton interferometer with sensitivity at the Heisenberg limit.
We theoretically investigate nonresonant spontaneous bremsstrahlung in the scattering of an electron by a nucleus in the field of two linearly polarized light waves propagating in the same direction in the general relativistic case. It is demonstrated that there are two substantially different kinematic ranges: the noninterference range, where the Bunkin-Fedorov quantum parameters serve as multiphoton parameters,and the interference range, where interference effects become significant, and quantum interference parameters play the role of multiphoton parameters. We determine the cross sections …
The spontaneous emission of an excited two-level emitter driven by a strong classical coherent low-frequency electromagnetic field is investigated. We find that for relatively strong laser driving, multi-photon processes are induced, thereby opening additional decay channels for the atom. We analyze the interplay between the strong low-frequency driving and the interfering multiphoton decay channels, and discuss its implications for the spontaneous emission dynamics.
Within the matrix product state framework, we study the non-Markovian feedback dynamics of a two-level system interacting with the electromagnetic field inside a semi-infinite waveguide where the excitation of an atom-photon bound state is possible. Taking the steady-state excitation of the emitter as a figure of merit, we compare the trapped excitation for an initially excited quantum emitter and an emitter prepared via quantized pulses containing up to four photons. In the latter case, we find that for large feedback delay times, multi-photon pulses can yield a significantly higher steady-st…
The multiphoton states generated by high-gain spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) in presence of large losses are investigated theoretically and experimentally. The explicit form for the two-photon output state has been found to exhibit a Werner structure very resilient to losses for any value of the gain parameter, g. The theoretical results are found in agreement with the experimental data. The last ones are obtained by quantum tomography of the state generated by a high-gain SPDC.
A method to interpret probe spectra of driven degenerate atomic systems is discussed. The dressed-atom multiphoton spectroscopy (DAMS) is based on a dressing of the atomic system with the strong coupling field, followed by a perturbative treatment of the probe field interaction. As example, we apply the DAMS to provide a clear interpretation for anomalous electromagnetically induced absorption (EIA), which cannot be explained by spontaneous transfer of coherence. We show that anomalous EIA arises from quantum interference between competing two-photon transitions, and explain the different depe…
Photonic interference is a key quantum resource for optical quantum computation, and in particular for so-called boson sampling machines. In interferometers with certain symmetries, genuine multiphoton quantum interference effectively suppresses certain sets of events, as in the original Hong-Ou-Mandel effect. Recently, it was shown that some classical and semi-classical models could be ruled out by identifying such suppressions in Fourier interferometers. Here we propose a suppression law suitable for random-input experiments in multimode Sylvester interferometers, and verify it experimentall…
We propose a very simple scheme to slow down the usual exponential decay of upper state population in an atomic two level system considerably. The scheme makes use of an additional intense field with frequency lower than the total decay width of the atomic transition. This allows for additional decay channels with the exchange of one or more low-frequency photons during an atomic transition. The various channels may then interfere with each other. The intensity and the frequency of the low-frequency field are shown to act as two different control parameters modifying the duration and the amoun…
The quantum statistical fluctuations of the electromagnetic field establish a limit, known as the shot-noise limit, on the sensitivity of optical measurements performed with classical technologies. However, quantum technologies are not constrained by this shot-noise limit. In this regard, the possibility of using every photon produced by quantum sources of light to estimate small physical parameters, beyond the shot-noise limit, constitutes one of the main goals of quantum optics. Here we experimentally demonstrate a scalable protocol for quantum-enhanced optical phase estimation across a broa…
Our work is based on the collision-induced coherence of two decay channels along two optical transitions.The quantum interference of pumping processes creates the dark state and the more atoms are pumped in this collision-induced dark state the stronger the suppression of the spontaneous emission. The efficiency of this suppression is quantified by putting it in comparison with the spontaneous emission on the ultraviolet transition which proceeds in a regular fashion. The branching ratio of these two(visible and ultraviolet) transitions is introduced as the effective measure of the degree of t…
The stability of entanglement of two atoms in a cavity is analyzed in this work. By studying the general Werner states we clarify the role of Bell-singlet state in the problem of suppression of disentanglement due to spontaneous emission. It is also shown explicitly that the final amount of entanglement depends on the initial ingredients of the Bell-singlet state.
In this work we investigate the quantum information theoretical limits to several tasks related to lifetime estimation and discrimination of a two-level spontaneous optical emitter. We focus in particular on the model problem of resolving two mutually incoherent exponential decays with highly overlapping temporal probability profiles. Mirroring recent work on quantum-inspired super-resolution of point emitters, we find that direct lifetime measurement suffers from an analogue of "Rayleigh's Curse" when the time constants of the two decay channels approach one another. We propose alternative me…
We study effects of direct interatomic interaction on cooperative processes in atom-photon dynamics. Using a model of two-level atoms with Ising-type interaction as an example, it is demonstrated that interparticle interaction combined with atom-field coupling can introduce additional interatomic correlations acting as a phase synchronizing factor. For the case of weakly interacting atoms with $J<\hbarω_0$, where $J$ is the interparticle coupling constant and $ω_0$ is the atomic frequency, dynamical regimes of cooperative relaxation of atoms are analyzed in Born-Markov approximation both numer…
We observe large spontaneous emission rate modification of individual InAs Quantum Dots (QDs) in 2D a photonic crystal with a modified, high-Q single defect cavity. Compared to QDs in bulk semiconductor, QDs that are resonant with the cavity show an emission rate increase by up to a factor of 8. In contrast, off-resonant QDs indicate up to five-fold rate quenching as the local density of optical states (LDOS) is diminished in the photonic crystal. In both cases we demonstrate photon antibunching, showing that the structure represents an on-demand single photon source with pulse duration from 2…
In a previous paper [B. Deb and G. S. Agarwal, Phys. Rev. A 90, 063417 (2014)], it was theoretically shown that, magneto-optical manipulation of low energy scattering resonances and atom-molecule transitions could lead to the formation of a bound state in continuum (BIC), provided there is no spontaneous emission. We find that even an exceedingly small spontaneous decay from exited molecular states can spoil the BIC. In this paper, we show how to circumvent the detrimental effect of spontaneous emission by making use of vacuum-induced coherence (VIC) which results in the cancellation or suppre…
The ac Stark shift in the presence of spontaneous decay is typically considered to induce an effective dephasing with a scattering rate equal to $ Γ_s |Ω|^2/Δ^2 $, where $ Γ_s $ is the spontaneous decay rate, $ Ω$ is the laser transition coupling, and $ Δ$ is the detuning. We show that under realistic circumstances this dephasing rate may be strongly modifed due to non-Markovian behavior. The non-Markovian behavior arises due to an effective modification of the light-atom coupling in the presence of the ac Stark shift laser. An analytical formula for the non-Markovian ac Stark shift induced de…
The effective Hamiltonian describing resonant interaction of an ensemble of identical quantum particles with a photon-free vacuum electromagnetic field has been obtained with allowance for the second-order terms over the coupling constant (the Stark interaction) by means of the perturbation theory on the basis of the unitary transformation of the system quantum state. It has been shown that in the Markov approximation the effective Hamiltonian terms of the first-order coupling constant are represented as the quantum Wiener process, whereas the second-order terms are expressed by the quantum Po…
Spontaneous two photon emission from a solid-state single quantum emitter is observed. We investigated photoluminescence from the neutral biexciton in a single semiconductor quantum dot coupled with a high Q photonic crystal nanocavity. When the cavity is resonant to the half energy of the biexciton, the strong vacuum field in the cavity inspires the biexciton to simultaneously emit two photons into the mode, resulting in clear emission enhancement of the mode. Meanwhile, suppression was observed of other single photon emission from the biexciton, as the two photon emission process becomes fas…
Deterministic generation of single photons is essential for many quantum information technologies. A bulk optical nonlinearity emitting a photon pair, where the measurement of one of the photons heralds the presence of the other, is commonly used with the caveat that the single-photon emission rate is constrained due to a trade-off between multiphoton events and pair emission rate. Using an efficient and low noise photon-number-resolving superconducting nanowire detector we herald, in real time, a single photon at telecommunication wavelength. We perform a second-order photon correlation $g^{2…
We show how the dynamics of collisions between cold atoms can be manipulated by a modification of spontaneous emission times. This is achieved by placing the atomic sample in a resonant optical cavity. Spontaneous emission is enhanced by a combination of multiparticle entanglement together with a higher density of modes of the modified vacuum field, in a situation akin to superradiance. A specific situation is considered and we show that this effect can be experimentally observed as a large suppression in trap-loss rates.
Ultra strong electromagnetic fields can lead to spontaneous creation of single or multiple electron-positron pairs. A quantum field theoretical treatment of the pair creation process combined with numerical methods provides a description of the fermionic quantum field state, from which all observables of the multiple electron-positron pairs can be inferred. This allows to study the complex multi-particle dynamics of electron-positron pair creation in-depth, including multi-pair statistics as well as momentum distributions and spin. To illustrate the potential benefit of this approach, it is ap…
For two qubits independently coupled to their respective structured reservoirs (Lorentzian spectrum), quantum beats for entanglement and discord are found which are the result of quantum interference between correlation oscillations induced by local non-Markovian environments. We also discuss the preservation of quantum correlations by the effective suppression of the spontaneous emission.
We explore the multiparticle transition probabilities in Gaussian unitaries effected by a two-mode Bogoliubov bosonic transformation on the mode annihilation and creation operators. We show that the transition probabilities can be characterized by remarkably simple, yet unsuspected recurrence equations involving a linear combination of probabilities. The recurrence exhibits an interferometric suppression term - a negative probability - which generalizes the seminal Hong-Ou-Mandel effect to more than two indistinguishable photons impinging on a beam splitter of rational transmittance. Unexpecte…
An open quantum system operated at the spectral singularities where dimensionality reduces, known as exceptional points (EPs), demonstrates distinguishing behavior from the Hermitian counterpart. Here, we present an analytical description of local density of states (LDOS) for microcavity featuring chiral EPs, and unveil the anomalous spontaneous emission dynamics from a quantum emitter (QE) due to the non-Lorentzian response of EPs. Specifically, we reveal that a square Lorentzian term of LDOS contributed by chiral EPs can destructively interfere with the linear Lorentzian profile, resulting i…
Spontaneous decay of an excited atomic state is a fundamental process that originates from the interaction between matter and vacuum modes of the electromagnetic field. The rate of decay can thus be engineered by modifying the density of final states of the joint atom-photon system. Imposing suitable boundary conditions on the electromagnetic field has been shown to alter the density of vacuum modes near the atomic transition, resulting in modified atomic decay rates. Here we report the first experimental demonstration of suppression of atomic radiative decay by reducing the density of availab…
We demonstrate suppression and enhancement of spontaneous parametric down- conversion via quantum interference with two weak fields from a local oscillator (LO). Pairs of LO photons are observed to upconvert with high efficiency for appropriate phase settings, exhibiting an effective nonlinearity enhanced by at least 10 orders of magnitude. This constitutes a two-photon switch, and promises to be useful for a variety of nonlinear optical effects at the quantum level.
Quantum memories are essential for large-scale quantum information networks. Along with high efficiency, storage lifetime and optical bandwidth, it is critical that the memory add negligible noise to the recalled signal. A common source of noise in optical quantum memories is spontaneous four-wave mixing. We develop and implement a technically simple scheme to suppress this noise mechanism by means of quantum interference. Using this scheme with a Raman memory in warm atomic vapour we demonstrate over an order of magnitude improvement in noise performance. Furthermore we demonstrate a method t…
We consider the interaction of atoms with the quantized electromagnetic field in the presence of materials with negative index of refraction. Spontaneous emission of an atom embedded in a negative index material is discussed. It is shown furthermore that the possibility of a vanishing optical path length between two spatially separated points provided by these materials can lead to complete suppression of spontaneous emission of an atom in front of a perfect mirror even if the distance between atom and mirror is large compared to the transition wavelength. Two atoms put in the focal points of …
We demonstrate the ability to control the spontaneous emission dynamics of self-assembled quantum dots via the local density of optical modes in 2D-photonic crystals. We show that an incomplete 2D photonic bandgap is sufficient to significantly lengthen the spontaneous emission lifetime ($>2\times$) over a wide bandwidth ($Δλ\geq40$ nm). For dots that are both \textit{spectrally} and \textit{spatially} coupled to strongly localized ($V_{mode}\sim1.5(λ/n)^{3}$), high $Q\sim2700$ optical modes, we have directly measured a strong Purcell enhanced shortening of the emission lifetime $\geq5.6\times…
We describe how a structured photonic medium controls the spontaneous emission rate from an excited quantum dot in the presence of electron-phonon coupling. We analyze this problem using a polaron transformed master equation and we consider specific examples of a photonic crystal cavity and a coupled cavity waveguide. We find that when the relaxation times of the photon and phonon baths are comparable, phonons influence spontaneous emission in a non-trivial way. We demonstrate why and how the broadband frequency dependence of the local photon density of states determines the photon emission ra…
Laser cooling is theoretically investigated in a cascade three-level scheme, where the excited state of a laser-driven transition is coupled by a second laser to a top, more stable level, as for alkali-earth atoms. The second laser action modifies the atomic scattering cross section and produces temperatures lower than those reached by Doppler cooling on the lower transition. When multiphoton processes due to the second laser are relevant, an electromagnetic induced transparency modifies the absorption of the first laser, and the final temperature is controlled by the second laser parameters. …
An on-going challenge within scalable optical quantum information processing is to increase the collection efficiency $\varepsilon$ and the photon indistinguishability $η$ of the single-photon source towards unity. Within quantum dot-based sources, the prospect of increasing the product $\varepsilon η$ arbitrarily close to unity was recently questioned. In this work, we discuss the influence of the trade-off between efficiency and indistinguishability in the presence of phonon-induced decoherence, and we show that the photonic "hourglass" design allows for improving $\varepsilon η$ beyond the …
We investigate the spontaneous emission rate of a two-level quantum emitter near a graphene-coated substrate under the influence of an external magnetic field or strain induced pseudo-magnetic field. We demonstrate that the application of the magnetic field can substantially increase or decrease the decay rate. We show that a suppression as large as 99$\%$ in the Purcell factor is achieved even for moderate magnetic fields. The emitter's lifetime is a discontinuous function of $|{\bf B}|$, which is a direct consequence of the occurrence of discrete Landau levels in graphene. We demonstrate tha…
