Experimental Demonstration of Quantum Stationary Light Pulses in an Atomic Ensemble

We report an experimental demonstration of the nonclassical stationary light pulse (SLP) in a cold atomic ensemble. A single collective atomic excitation is created and heralded by detecting a Stokes photon in the spontaneous Raman scattering process. The heralded single atomic excitation is convert...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysical review. X Vol. 8; no. 2; p. 021016
Main Authors Park, Kwang-Kyoon, Cho, Young-Wook, Chough, Young-Tak, Kim, Yoon-Ho
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published College Park American Physical Society 01.04.2018
Subjects
Atomic excitations
Atoms & subatomic particles
Group velocity
Laser beams
Lasers
Light
Nonlinear optics
Optics
Photonic crystals
Photons
Quantum computing
Quantum optics
Raman spectra
Rubidium
Trapping
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Summary:We report an experimental demonstration of the nonclassical stationary light pulse (SLP) in a cold atomic ensemble. A single collective atomic excitation is created and heralded by detecting a Stokes photon in the spontaneous Raman scattering process. The heralded single atomic excitation is converted into a single stationary optical excitation or the single-photon SLP, whose effective group velocity is zero, effectively forming a trapped single-photon pulse within the cold atomic ensemble. The single-photon SLP is then released from the atomic ensemble as an anti-Stokes photon after a specified trapping time. The second-order correlation measurement between the Stokes and anti-Stokes photons reveals the nonclassical nature of the single-photon SLP. Our work paves the way toward quantum nonlinear optics without a cavity.
ISSN:2160-3308
2160-3308
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevX.8.021016