In situ tunable photon blockade assisted by a Floquet coupler
Phys. Rev. Applied 25, 014026 – Published 12 January, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/19kw-wmdw
Abstract
We propose an in situ tunable photon blockade scheme based on a three-mode interaction model comprising two bosonic modes and a two-level system. In this scheme, the mediating bosonic mode, which is subjected to periodic modulation, serves as a Floquet coupler. This approach offers two significant advantages: (1) it enables universal photon blockade by increasing the number of coupling channels, thereby integrating the strengths of both conventional and unconventional photon blockades, while overcoming their coupling strength limitations; (2) it introduces additional controllable degrees of freedom and periodic characteristics, allowing the system to generate single photons with different frequencies on demand. The numerical results for the second-order correlation function of photons and the average single-photon number indicate that, in both the strong-coupling regime and the weak-coupling regime, the universal photon blockade surpasses conventional and unconventional photon blockades individually, reducing the photon second-order correlation function by 2 orders of magnitude. Our proposed scheme holds promise for designing integrated and versatile single-photon sources capable of performing multiple tasks.
