We discuss the quasi 1-D scattering of two counter-propagating, dark-state polaritons (DSP), each containing a single excitation. DSPs are formed from photons in media with electromagnetically induced transparency and are associated with ultra-slow group velocities. State-dependent elastic collisions of atoms at the same lattice site lead to a nonlinear interaction. It is shown that the scattering process in a deep optical lattice filled by cold atoms generates a large and homogeneous conditional phase shift between two individual polaritons. The latter has potential applications for a photonic phase gate. The quasi 1-D scattering problem is solved analytically and the influence of degrading processes such as dephasing due to collisions with ground-state atoms is discussed.
We perform a quantum-theoretical treatment of cavity linewidth narrowing with intracavity electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). By means of intracavity EIT, the photons in the cavity are in the form of cavity polaritons: bright-state polariton and dark-state polariton. Strong coupling of the bright-state polariton to the excited state induces an effect known as vacuum Rabi splitting, whereas the dark-state polariton decoupled from the excited state induce a narrow cavity transmission window. Our analysis would provide a quantum theory of linewidth narrowing with a quantum field pulse…
We identify form-stable coupled excitations of light and matter (``dark-state polaritons'') associated with the propagation of quantum fields in Electromagnetically Induced Transparency. The properties of the dark-state polaritons such as the group velocity are determined by the mixing angle between light and matter components and can be controlled by an external coherent field as the pulse propagates. In particular, light pulses can be decelerated and ``trapped'' in which case their shape and quantum state are mapped onto metastable collective states of matter. Possible applications of this r…
We investigate the dynamics of dark-state polaritons in an atomic ensemble with ground-state degeneracy. A signal light pulse may be stored and retrieved from the atomic sample by adiabatic variation of the amplitude of a control field. During the storage process, a magnetic field causes rotation of the atomic hyperfine coherences, leading to collapses and revivals of the dark-state polariton number. These collapses and revivals should be observable in measurements of the retrieved signal field, as a function of storage time and magnetic field orientation.
We show the possible stable soliton generation for the dark-state polaritons (DSPs) in an electromagnetic induced transparency (EIT) medium composed of $Λ$-type atoms. Whether the solitons are dark or bright can be controlled by the coupling field intensity and the one photon detuning of the probe field. Besides, the velocity and time width of the solitons also can be adjusted by the coupling light.
We present a general scheme to determine the loss-free adiabatic eigensolutions (dark-state polaritons) of the interaction of multiple probe laser beams with a coherently driven atomic ensemble under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency. To this end we generalize the Morris-Shore transformation to linearized Heisenberg-Langevin equations describing the coupled light-matter system in the weak excitation limit. For the simple lambda-type coupling scheme the generalized Morris-Shore transformation reproduces the dark-state polariton solutions of slow light. Here we treat a close…
The possibility of using a solid medium to store few-photon laser pulses as coupled excitations between light and matter is investigated. The role of inhomogeneous broadening and nonadiabaticity are considered, and conditions governing the feasibility of the scheme are derived. The merits of a number of classes of solid are examined.
We propose a continuous variable analog of quantum controlled-NOT gates based on a system of exciton-polaritons in semiconductor microcavities. This can be realized by the engineering of parametric interaction between control and target polariton modes, which can be varied in time. As an explicit setup we use a system of dipolaritons, which allows for enhancement of parametric interaction by auxiliary classical fields and scalable multigate system realization. The calculated fidelity is shown to exceed 99% for realistic system parameters.
We describe a design to implement a two-qubit geometric phase gate, by which a pair of electrons confined in adjacent quantum dots are entangled. The entanglement is a result of the Coulomb exchange interaction between the optically excited exciton-polaritons and the localized spins. This optical coupling, resembling the electron-electron Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) inter- actions, offers high speed, high fidelity two-qubit gate operation with moderate cavity quality factor Q. The errors due to the finite lifetime of the polaritons can be minimized by optimizing the optical pulse para…
An ideal and reversible transfer technique for the quantum state between light and metastable collective states of matter is presented and analyzed in detail. The method is based on the control of photon propagation in coherently driven 3-level atomic media, in which the group velocity is adiabatically reduced to zero. Form-stable coupled excitations of light and matter (``dark-state polaritons'') associated with the propagation of quantum fields in Electromagnetically Induced Transparency are identified, their basic properties discussed and their application for quantum memories for light ana…
By time-dependent variation of a control field, both coherent and single photon states of light are stored in, and retrieved from, a cold atomic gas. The efficiency of retrieval is studied as a function of the storage time in an applied magnetic field. A series of collapses and revivals is observed, in very good agreement with theoretical predictions. The observations are interpreted in terms of the time evolution of the collective excitation of atomic spin wave and light wave, known as the dark-state polariton.
We consider the slow light propagation in an atomic medium with a tripod level scheme. We show that the coexistence of two types of dark-state polaritons leads to the propagation dynamics, which is qualitatively different from that in a $Λ$-medium, and allows therefore for very efficient conversion of signal photons into spin excitations. This efficiency is shown to be very close to 1 even for very long signal light pulses, which could not be entirely compressed into a Lambda-medium at a comparable strength of the control field.
We suggest a technique to induce effective, controllable interactions between atoms that is based on Raman scattering into an optical mode propagating with a slow group velocity. The resulting excitation corresponds to the creation of spin-flipped atomic pairs in a way that is analogous to correlated photon emission in optical parametric amplification. The technique can be used for fast generation of entangled atomic ensembles, spin squeezing and applications in quantum information processing.
In this paper we introduce and analyze a new system design for quantum-dot-based qubits that simultaneously supports scalable one-qubit and two-qubit gates, and single-shot qubit measurement. All three key processes (one-qubit gates, two-qubit gates, and qubit measurement) rely on the interaction between the electron in each quantum dot and exciton-polaritons formed in a quantum well situated near the quantum dots. A key novel feature of our proposed system is the use of polariton traps, which we show enhances the quantum-dot--quantum-well interaction by a factor of 10 and consequently results…
We analyze the fidelity of a deterministic quantum phase gate for two photons counterpropagating as polaritons through a cloud of Rydberg atoms under the condition of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). We provide analytical results for the phase shift of the quantum gate, and provide an estimation for all processes leading to a reduction to the gate fidelity. Especially, the influence of losses form the intermediate level, dispersion of the photon wave packet, scattering into additional polariton channels, finite lifetime of the Rydberg state, as well as effects of transverse size…
Coupling light to Rydberg states of atoms under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) leads to the formation of strongly interacting quasi-particles, termed Rydberg polaritons. We derive a one-dimensional model describing the time evolution of these polaritons under paraxial propagation conditions, which we verify by numerical two-excitation simulations. We determine conditions allowing for a description by an effective Hamiltonian of a single-species polariton, and calculate ground-state correlations by use of the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG). Under typic…
It has been proved that surface plasmon polariton (SPP) can well conserve and transmit the quantum nature of entangled photons. Therefore, further utilization and manipulation of such quantum nature of SPP in a plasmonic chip will be the next task for scientists in this field. In quantum logic circuits, the controlled-NOT (CNOT) gate is the key building block. Here, we implement the first plasmonic quantum CNOT gate with several-micrometer footprint by utilizing a single polarization-dependent beam-splitter (PDBS) fabricated on the dielectric-loaded SPP waveguide (DLSPPW). The quantum logic fu…
We consider the propagation of a quantized polarized light in a magneto-optically manipulated atomic ensemble with a tripod configuration. Polariton formalism is applied when the medium is subjected to a washboard magnetic field under electromagnetically induced transparency. The dark-state polariton with multiple components is achieved. We analyze quantum dynamics of the dark-state polariton by some experiment data from rubidium D1-line. It is found that one component propagates freely, however the wavepacket trajectory of the other component performs Bloch oscillations.
We put forward and discuss in detail a scheme to achieve Bose-Einstein condensation of stationary-light dark-state polaritons with dipolar interaction. To this end we have introduced a diamond-like coupling scheme in a vapor of Rydberg atoms under the frozen gas approximation. To determine the system's dynamics we employ normal modes and identify the dark-state polariton corresponding to one of the modes. We show that in contrast to atomic dipolar ultra-cold vapors dark-state polariton Bose-Einstein condensates proposed here can be stable for a negative dipolar interaction constant.
Using an extended Tavis-Cummings model, we study the effect of the spin-orbit coupling between the singlet and the triplet molecular excitons in organic microcavities in the strong coupling regime. The model is solved in the single excitation space for polaritons, which contains the bright (permutation symmetric) singlet and triplet excitons, as well as the dark bands consisting of the nonsymmetric excitons of either type. We find that the spin-orbit coupling splits the lower polariton into two branches, and also creates a triplet polariton when the cavity mode is in resonance with the triplet…
The general theory of dark solitons relies on repulsive interactions and therefore predicts the impossibility to form dark-soliton bound states. One important exception to this prediction is the observation of bound solitons in non-local nonlinear media. Here, we report that exciton-polariton superfluids can also sustain dark-soliton molecules although the interactions are fully local. With a novel all optical technique, we create two dark solitons and bind them to each other to form an unconventional dark-soliton molecule. We demonstrate that the stability of this structure and the separation…
We demonstrate a multiphoton Rydberg dark resonance where a Lambda-system is coupled to a Rydberg state. This N-type level scheme combines the ability to slow and store light pulses associated with long lived ground state superpositions, with the strongly interacting character of Rydberg states. For the nd_{5/2} Rydberg state in 87Rb (with n=26 or 44) and a beam size of 1 mm we observe a resonance linewidth of less than 100 kHz in a room temperature atomic ensemble limited by transit-time broadening. The resonance is switchable with an electric field of order 1 V/cm. We show that, even when ph…
Inhomogeneous mass trap for dark-state polaritons in atomic media
National Central University（中央大学）；National Tsing Hua University（清华大学）；National Center for Excellence in Quantum Information Science and Engineering, National Tsing Hua University（国家量子信息科学与工程卓越中心）；Physics Division, National Center for Theoretical Sciences（理论科学国家中心物理部）；Quantum Technology Center, National Central University（量子技术中心）
Electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT) with Rydberg atoms enables strong interactions between atoms to be controlled and measured by pulses of light. Consequently, Rydberg dark polaritons are a promising platform for quantum simulations. Of particular interest are simulations of one-dimensional systems, known to exhibit unique properties compared to their higher-dimensional counterparts. One limitation of standard EIT is that reducing the polariton group velocity to bring the dark polaritons to rest also implies activating strong Rydberg interactions. To achieve independent control of …
When a collection of quantum emitters interacts with an electromagnetic field, the whole system can enter into the collective strong coupling regime in which hybrid light-matter states, i.e., polaritons can be created. Only a small portion of excitations in the emitters are coupled to the light field, and there are many dark states that, in principle, retain their pure excitonic nature. Here we theoretically demonstrate that these dark states can have a delocalized character, which is inherent to polaritons, despite the fact that they do not have a photonic component. This unexpected behavior …
We consider a two-dimensional extension of the 1D waveguide quantum electrodynamics and investigate the nature of linear excitations in two-dimensional arrays of qubits coupled to networks of chiral waveguides. We show that the combined effects of chirality and long-range photon mediated qubit-qubit interactions lead to the emergence of the two-dimensional flat bands in the polaritonic spectrum, corresponding to slow strongly correlated light.
Collective excitations, such as vortex-antivortex and dark solitons, are among the most fascinating effects of macroscopic quantum states. However, 2D dark solitons are unstable and collapse into vortices due to snake instabilities. Making use of the optical bistability in exciton-polariton microcavities, we demonstrate that a pair of dark solitons can be formed in the wake of an obstacle in a polariton flow resonantly supported by a homogeneous laser beam. Unlike the purely dissipative case where the solitons are grey and spatially separate, here the two solitons are fully dark, rapidly align…
In resonantly pumped polariton superfluids we recently explored a new regime based on the bistability of the polariton system to enhance the propagation of polariton fluids up to macroscopic distances. This technique together with an all-optical imprinting method allowed the generation and control of various topological excitations such as quantized vortices and dark solitons. The flexibility and scalability of the new experimental scheme opens the way to the systematic study of quantum turbulence in driven dissipative quantum fluids of light. In this article we review the basic working princi…
Interfacing light and matter at the quantum level is at the heart of modern atomic and optical physics and enables new quantum technologies involving the manipulation of single photons and atoms. A prototypical atom-light interface is electromagnetically induced transparency, in which quantum interference gives rise to hybrid states of photons and atoms called dark-state polaritons. We have observed individual dark-state polaritons as they propagate through an ultracold atomic gas involving Rydberg states. Strong long-range interactions between Rydberg atoms give rise to an effective interacti…
We propose an all optical quantum computation scheme, with trapped electron spin qubits, using their Coulomb exchange interaction with optically excited microcavity exciton-polaritons. This paper describes a single qubit rotation, which together with two-qubit controlled-z gate presented in PRB 85, 241403(R) (2012), form a set of universal logic gates. The errors due to finite cavity lifetime and incorrect orientation of the rotation axis are minimized by optimizing pump pulse parameters. With projective homodyne phase measurement and initialization, our scheme is a promising candidate for the…
We examine the dynamics of Rydberg polaritons with dipolar interactions that propagate in multiple spatial modes. The dipolar excitation exchange between different Rydberg states mediates an effective exchange between polaritons that enables photons to hop across different spatial channels. Remarkably, the efficiency of this photon exchange process can increase with the channel distance and becomes optimal at a finite rail separation. Based on this mechanism, we design a simple photonic network that realizes a two photon quantum gate with a robust $π$-phase, protected by the symmetries of the …
The quest of utilizing neutral particles to simulate the behaviour of charged particles in a magnetic field makes the generation of artificial magnetic field of great interest. The previous and the only proposal for the production of synthetic magnetic field for the dark state polaritons in electromagnetically induced transparency invokes the mechanical rotation of a sample. Here, we put forward an optical scheme to generate effective gauge potentials for stationary-light polaritons. 5To demonstrate the capabilities of our approach, we present recipes for having dark state polaritons in degene…
We develop an architecture for distributed quantum computation using quantum bus of plasmonic circuits and spin qubits in self-assembled quantum dots. Deterministic quantum gates between two distant spin qubits can be reached by using an adiabatic approach in which quantum dots couple with highly detuned plasmon modes in a metallic nanowire. Plasmonic quantum bus offers a robust and scalable platform for quantum optics experiments and the development of on-chip quantum networks composed of various quantum nodes, such as quantum dots, molecules and nanoparticles.
Collective strong coupling between a disordered ensemble of $N$ localized molecular vibrations and a resonant optical cavity mode gives rise to 2 polariton and $N-1\gg2$ dark modes. Thus, experimental changes in thermally-activated reaction kinetics due to polariton formation appear entropically unlikely and remain a puzzle. Here we show that the overlooked dark modes, while parked at the same energy as bare molecular vibrations, are robustly delocalized across $\sim$2-3 molecules, yielding enhanced channels of vibrational cooling, concomitantly catalyzing a chemical reaction. As an illustrati…
The influence of decoherence on the fidelity of quantum memories for photonic qubits based on dark-state polaritons in atomic ensembles is discussed. It is shown that despite the large entanglement of the collective storage states corresponding to single photons or nonclassical states of light the sensitivity to decoherence does not scale with the number of atoms. This is due to the existence of equivalence classes of storage states corresponding to states with the same number of dark-state polariton excitations but arbitrary excitations in other polariton modes. Several decoherence processes …
Cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED), wherein a quantum emitter is coupled to electromagnetic cavity modes, is a powerful platform for implementing quantum sensors, memories, and networks. However, due to the fundamental tradeoff between gate fidelity and execution time, as well as limited scalability, the use of cavity-QED for quantum computation was overtaken by other architectures. Here, we introduce a new element into cavity-QED - a free charged particle, acting as a flying qubit. Using free electrons as a specific example, we demonstrate that our approach enables ultrafast, deterministic …
Organic microcavities are photonic nanostructures that strongly confine the electromagnetic field, allowing exotic quantum regimes of light-matter interaction with disordered organic semiconductors. The unambiguous interpretation of the spectra of organic microcavities has been a long-standing challenge due to several competing effects involving electrons, vibrations and cavity photons. Here we present a theoretical framework that is able to describe the main spectroscopic features of organic microcavities consistently. We introduce a class of light-matter excitations called dark vibronic pola…
We propose and analyze a mechanism for Bose-Einstein condensation of stationary dark-state polaritons. Dark-state polaritons (DSPs) are formed in the interaction of light with laser-driven 3-level Lambda-type atoms and are the basis of phenomena such as electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), ultra-slow and stored light. They have long intrinsic lifetimes and in a stationary set-up with two counterpropagating control fields of equal intensity have a 3D quadratic dispersion profile with variable effective mass. Since DSPs are bosons they can undergo a Bose-Einstein condensation at a cri…
We study the collective behavior of molecules placed in an infrared (IR) microcavity, incorporating the local fluctuations, i.e., dynamical disorder. The cooperative feature in vibrational polaritons is shown to be dynamically eroded, due to intermolecule coherence. To further resolve such process, we develop a two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy (2D-IR) for molecules interacting with cavity modes. The cooperative feature in correspondence to the spectroscopic signal is specified. The results reveal the dark states by the cross peaks apart from the ones for polaritons, as a result of the bre…
Exciton-polaritons are hybrid elementary excitations of light and matter that, thanks to their nonlinear properties, enable a plethora of physical phenomena ranging from room temperature condensation to superfluidity. While polaritons are usually exploited in high density regime, evidence of quantum correlations at the level of few excitations has been recently reported, thus suggesting the possibility of using these systems for quantum information purposes. Here we show that integrated circuits of propagating single polaritons can be arranged to build deterministic quantum logic gates in whic…
Two-photon absorption (TPA) allows accessing dark states of matter otherwise inaccessible to light, which serve as important building blocks for quantum information processing. In a semiconductor microcavity, TPA driven condensation of strongly-coupled light-matter exciton-polaritons can enable new solid-state quantum simulations of dark state-condensate interactions, and was predicted to stimulate THz emission. Here, we report the first observation of two-photon pumped polariton condensation, demonstrated by angle-resolved photoluminescence in a GaAs-based microcavity. TPA is evidenced in the…
Nonperturbative coupling between cavity photons and excitons leads to formation of hybrid light-matter excitations termed polaritons. In structures where photon absorption leads to creation of excitons with aligned permanent dipoles, the elementary excitations, termed dipolar polaritons, are expected to exhibit enhanced interactions. Here, we report a substantial increase in interaction strength between dipolar polaritons as the size of the dipole is increased by tuning the applied gate voltage. To this end, we use coupled quantum well structures embedded inside a microcavity where coherent el…
For molecular polaritons, disorder and phonon timescales control the activation of dark states in the thermodynamic limit
University of Colorado Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校）；Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院化学研究所）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）
Graphene has emerged as a promising platform to bring nonlinear quantum optics to the nanoscale, where a large intrinsic optical nonlinearity enables long-lived and actively tunable plasmon polaritons to strongly interact. Here we theoretically study the collision between two counter-propagating plasmons in a graphene nanoribbon, where transversal subwavelength confinement endows propagating plasmons with %large effective masses a flat band dispersion that enhances their interaction. This scenario presents interesting possibilities towards the implementation of multi-mode polaritonic gates tha…
In the regime of ensemble vibrational strong coupling (VSC), a macroscopic number $N$ of molecular transitions couple to each resonant cavity mode, yielding two hybrid light-matter (polariton) modes, and a reservoir of $N-1$ dark states whose chemical dynamics are essentially those of the bare molecules. This fact is seemingly in opposition to the recently reported modification of thermally activated ground electronic state reactions under VSC. Here, we provide a VSC Marcus-Levich-Jortner electron transfer model that potentially addresses this paradox: while entropy favors the transit through …
We demonstrate hybridization of optical cavity photons with atomic Rydberg excitations using electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). The resulting dark state Rydberg polaritons exhibit a compressed frequency spectrum and enhanced lifetime indicating strong light-matter mixing. We study the coherence properties of cavity Rydberg polaritons and identify the generalized EIT linewidth for optical cavities. Strong collective coupling suppresses polariton losses due to inhomogeneous broadening, which we demonstrate by using different Rydberg levels with a range of polarizabilities. Our resul…
Dark and bright excitons are shown to appear naturally in a linear atomic super-lattice with two atoms per unit cell. In bringing the super-lattice into a strong coupling regime with a one-dimensional nanophotonic waveguide, bright excitons and photons are coherently mixed to form polaritons. Treating excitons as bosons implies a mechanism that forbids two excitations from being at the same atomic state, which is included here through a bosonization procedure with kinematic interactions. Interestingly these interactions couple dark and bright excitons, and which we exploit as a new tool for ex…
We investigate the storage of light in atomic rubidium vapor using a multilevel-tripod scheme. In the system, two collective dark polariton modes exist, forming an effective spinor quasiparticle. Storage of light is performed by dynamically reducing the optical group velocity to zero. After releasing the stored pulse, a beating of the two reaccelerated optical modes is monitored. The observed beating signal oscillates at an atomic transition frequency, opening the way to novel quantum limited measurements of atomic resonance frequencies and quantum switches.
