Single-photon transistor mediated by interstate Rydberg interactions

We report on the realization of an all-optical transistor by mapping gate and source photons into strongly interacting Rydberg excitations with different principal quantum numbers in an ultracold atomic ensemble. We obtain a record switch contrast of 40% for a coherent gate input with mean photon nu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysical review letters Vol. 113; no. 5; p. 053601
Main Authors Gorniaczyk, H, Tresp, C, Schmidt, J, Fedder, H, Hofferberth, S
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 28.07.2014
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Summary:We report on the realization of an all-optical transistor by mapping gate and source photons into strongly interacting Rydberg excitations with different principal quantum numbers in an ultracold atomic ensemble. We obtain a record switch contrast of 40% for a coherent gate input with mean photon number one and demonstrate attenuation of source transmission by over ten photons with a single gate photon. We use our optical transistor to demonstrate the nondestructive detection of a single Rydberg atom with a fidelity of 0.72(4).
ISSN:1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/physrevlett.113.053601