Measuring photon-photon interactions via photon detection

作者:Macovei Mihai A*
来源:Physical Review A, 2010, 82(6): 063815.
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevA.82.063815

摘要

Strong nonlinearity plays a significant role in physics, particularly in the design of novel quantum sources of light and matter as well as in quantum chemistry and quantum biology. In simple systems, the photon-photon interaction can be determined analytically. However, it becomes challenging to obtain it for more complex systems. Therefore, we show here how to measure strong nonlinearities by allowing the sample to interact with a weakly pumped quantized leaking optical mode. We found that the detected mean photon number versus pump-field frequency shows several peaks. Interestingly, the interval between neighboring peaks equals the photon-photon interaction potential. Furthermore, the system exhibits sub-Poissonian photon statistics, entanglement, and photon switching with less than one photon. Finally, we connect our study with existing experiments.

  • 出版日期2010-12-10