Exceptional Photon Blockade: Engineering Photon Blockade with Chiral Exceptional Points

Non‐hermitian spectral degeneracies, known as exceptional points (EPs), feature the simultaneous coalescence of both eigenvalues and the associated eigenstates of a system. A host of intriguing EP effects and their applications have been revealed in the classical realm, such as loss‐induced lasing,...

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Published inLaser & photonics reviews Vol. 16; no. 7
Main Authors Huang, Ran, Özdemir, Ş. K., Liao, Jie‐Qiao, Minganti, Fabrizio, Kuang, Le‐Man, Nori, Franco, Jing, Hui
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Weinheim Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.07.2022
Subjects
Anharmonicity
Eigenvalues
Eigenvectors
exceptional point
photon blockade
Photons
quantum correlations
single photons
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Summary:Non‐hermitian spectral degeneracies, known as exceptional points (EPs), feature the simultaneous coalescence of both eigenvalues and the associated eigenstates of a system. A host of intriguing EP effects and their applications have been revealed in the classical realm, such as loss‐induced lasing, single‐mode laser, and EP‐enhanced sensing. Here, it is shown that a purely quantum effect, known as single‐photon blockade, emerges in a Kerr microring resonator due to EP‐induced asymmetric coupling between the optical modes and the nonlinearity‐induced anharmonic energy‐level spacing. A striking feature of this photon blockade is that it emerges at two‐photon resonance which in Hermitian systems will only lead to photon‐induced tunneling but not to photon blockade. By tuning the system towards or away from an EP, one can control quantum correlations, implying the potential use of their system for frequency tunable single‐photon generation and an antibunching‐to‐bunching light switch. The work sheds new light on EP‐engineered purely quantum effects, providing unique opportunities for making and utilizing various single‐photon quantum EP devices. Chiral exceptional points (EPs) can emerge by controlling the relative angular position of two nanotips placed near an optical Kerr resonator. The interplay of EPs and Kerr nonlinearity leads to the counterintuitive effect of two‐photon resonance antibunching. Also, frequency‐tunable photon blockade can be achieved in such a quantum non‐Hermitian device.
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ISSN:1863-8880
1863-8899
DOI:10.1002/lpor.202100430