Controlling nonlinear photon-photon interaction via a two-level system

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Abstract

The problem of photon-photon interaction controlled by a two-level system is studied in this paper. Specifically, we have proposed two scenarios: Case 1, how a two-level system changes the pulse shapes of two initially uncorrelated input photons in a single input channel; and Case 2, how a two-level system entangles two counter-propagating photons, one in each input channel. The steady-state output field states for both cases are derived explicitly. For Case 1, the Wigner spectrum is used to exhibit the interesting properties of the output field state. For Case 2, the nonlinear property of the interaction between the two-level system and the two input photons has been revealed by the probabilities of observing photons in the output channels. In addition, two-photon interference, similar to Hong-Ou-Mandel effect, occurs when the two input photons are chosen with the same pulse shape.

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Quantum Ito's formula and stochastic evolutions

R. L. Hudson, K. R. Parthasarathy (1984)

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A single-photon transistor using nano-scale surface plasmons

D. Chang, A Sørensen, E Demler … (2007)

It is well known that light quanta (photons) can interact with each other in nonlinear media, much like massive particles do, but in practice these interactions are usually very weak. Here we describe a novel approach to realize strong nonlinear interactions at the single-photon level. Our method makes use of recently demonstrated efficient coupling between individual optical emitters and tightly confined, propagating surface plasmon excitations on conducting nanowires. We show that this system can act as a nonlinear two-photon switch for incident photons propagating along the nanowire, which can be coherently controlled using quantum optical techniques. As a novel application, we discuss how the interaction can be tailored to create a single-photon transistor, where the presence or absence of a single incident photon in a ``gate'' field is sufficient to completely control the propagation of subsequent ``signal'' photons.