- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review Research

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Letter
  • Open Access

Quantum nonlinear metasurfaces from dual arrays of ultracold atoms

Simon Panyella Pedersen*, Lida Zhang (张理达)†, and Thomas Pohl‡

  • Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark

  • *spp@phys.au.dk
  • †zhanglida@phys.au.dk
  • ‡pohl@phys.au.dk
PDF

Phys. Rev. Research 5, L012047 – Published 27 March, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.L012047

Abstract

Optical interfaces with subwavelength patterns make it possible to manipulate light waves beyond the typical capabilities of ordinary optical media. Subwavelength arrays of ultracold atoms enable such transformations at very low photon losses. Here, we show how the coupling of light to more than a single atomic array can expand these perspectives into the domain of quantum nonlinear optics. While a single array transmits and reflects light in a highly coherent but largely linear fashion, the combination of two arrays is found to induce strong photon-photon interactions that can convert an incoming classical beam into strongly correlated photonic states. Such quantum metasurfaces open up new possibilities for coherently generating and manipulating nonclassical light, and exploring quantum many-body phenomena in two-dimensional systems of strongly interacting photons.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

Supplemental Material

References (56)

  1. C. Gross and I. Bloch, Quantum simulations with ultracold atoms in optical lattices, Science 357, 995 (2017).
  2. H. Zheng and H. U. Baranger, Persistent Quantum Beats and Long-Distance Entanglement from Waveguide-Mediated Interactions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 113601 (2013).
  3. J. D. Thompson, T. G. Tiecke, N. P. de Leon, J. Feist, A. V. Akimov, M. Gullans, A. S. Zibrov, V. Vuletić, and M. D. Lukin, Coupling a Single Trapped Atom to a Nanoscale Optical Cavity, Science 340, 1202 (2013).
  4. J. Petersen, J. Volz, and A. Rauschenbeutel, Chiral nanophotonic waveguide interface based on spin-orbit interaction of light, Science 346, 67 (2014).
  5. T. G. Tiecke, J. D. Thompson, N. P. de Leon, L. R. Liu, V. Vuletić, and M. D. Lukin, Nanophotonic quantum phase switch with a single atom, Nature (London) 508, 241 (2014).
  6. A. Goban, C.-L. Hung, J. D. Hood, S.-P. Yu, J. A. Muniz, O. Painter, and H. J. Kimble, Superradiance for Atoms Trapped along a Photonic Crystal Waveguide, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 063601 (2015).
  7. J. S. Douglas, H. Habibian, C.-L. Hung, A. V. Gorshkov, H. J. Kimble, and D. E. Chang, Quantum many-body models with cold atoms coupled to photonic crystals, Nat. Photonics 9, 326 (2015).
  8. R. J. Coles, D. M. Price, J. E. Dixon, B. Royall, E. Clarke, P. Kok, M. S. Skolnick, A. M. Fox, and M. N. Makhonin, Chirality of nanophotonic waveguide with embedded quantum emitter for unidirectional spin transfer, Nat. Commun. 7, 11183 (2016).
  9. G. Calajó, F. Ciccarello, D. Chang, and P. Rabl, Atom-field dressed states in slow-light waveguide QED, Phys. Rev. A 93, 033833 (2016).
  10. H. Zoubi and K. Hammerer, Quantum Nonlinear Optics in Optomechanical Nanoscale Waveguides, Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 123602 (2017).
  11. A. Rosario Hamann, C. Müller, M. Jerger, M. Zanner, J. Combes, M. Pletyukhov, M. Weides, T. M. Stace, and A. Fedorov, Nonreciprocity Realized with Quantum Nonlinearity, Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 123601 (2018).
  12. S.-P. Yu, J. A. Muniz, C.-L. Hung, and H. J. Kimble, Two-dimensional photonic crystals for engineering atom–light interactions, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 116, 12743 (2019).
  13. Y. Ke, A. V. Poshakinskiy, C. Lee, Y. S. Kivshar, and A. N. Poddubny, Inelastic Scattering of Photon Pairs in Qubit Arrays with Subradiant States, Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 253601 (2019).
  14. R. Jones, G. Buonaiuto, B. Lang, I. Lesanovsky, and B. Olmos, Collectively Enhanced Chiral Photon Emission from an Atomic Array near a Nanofiber, Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 093601 (2020).
  15. R. J. Bettles, S. A. Gardiner, and C. S. Adams, Enhanced Optical Cross Section via Collective Coupling of Atomic Dipoles in a 2D Array, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 103602 (2016).
  16. G. Facchinetti, S. D. Jenkins, and J. Ruostekoski, Storing Light with Subradiant Correlations in Arrays of Atoms, Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 243601 (2016).
  17. E. Shahmoon, D. S. Wild, M. D. Lukin, and S. F. Yelin, Cooperative Resonances in Light Scattering from Two-Dimensional Atomic Arrays, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 113601 (2017).
  18. A. Asenjo-Garcia, M. Moreno-Cardoner, A. Albrecht, H. J. Kimble, and D. E. Chang, Exponential Improvement in Photon Storage Fidelities Using Subradiance and “Selective Radiance” in Atomic Arrays, Phys. Rev. X 7, 031024 (2017).
  19. K. E. Ballantine and J. Ruostekoski, Optical Magnetism and Huygens' Surfaces in Arrays of Atoms Induced by Cooperative Responses, Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 143604 (2020).
  20. J. Rui, D. Wei, A. Rubio-Abadal, S. Hollerith, J. Zeiher, D. M. Stamper-Kurn, C. Gross, and I. Bloch, A subradiant optical mirror formed by a single structured atomic layer, Nature (London) 583, 369 (2020).
  21. A. V. Poshakinskiy, J. Zhong, and A. N. Poddubny, Quantum Chaos Driven by Long-Range Waveguide-Mediated Interactions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 203602 (2021).
  22. T. L. Patti, D. S. Wild, E. Shahmoon, M. D. Lukin, and S. F. Yelin, Controlling Interactions between Quantum Emitters Using Atom Arrays, Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 223602 (2021).
  23. A. S. Sheremet, M. I. Petrov, I. V. Iorsh, A. V. Poshakinskiy, and A. N. Poddubny, Waveguide quantum electrodynamics: Collective radiance and photon-photon correlations, arXiv:2103.06824 [quant-ph] (2021).
  24. A. V. Kildishev, A. Boltasseva, and V. M. Shalaev, Planar photonics with metasurfaces, Science 339, 1232009 (2013).
  25. N. Yu and F. Capasso, Flat optics with designer metasurfaces, Nat. Mater. 13, 139 (2014).
  26. H.-T. Chen, A. J. Taylor, and N. Yu, A review of metasurfaces: Physics and applications, Rep. Prog. Phys. 79, 076401 (2016).
  27. V.-C. Su, C. H. Chu, G. Sun, and D. P. Tsai, Advances in optical metasurfaces: fabrication and applications, Opt. Express 26, 13148 (2018).
  28. C.-W. Qiu, T. Zhang, G. Hu, and Y. Kivshar, Quo vadis, metasurfaces?, Nano Letters, Nano Lett. 21, 5461 (2021).
  29. A. Cidrim, T. S. do Espirito Santo, J. Schachenmayer, R. Kaiser, and R. Bachelard, Photon Blockade with Ground-State Neutral Atoms, Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 073601 (2020).
  30. L. A. Williamson, M. O. Borgh, and J. Ruostekoski, Superatom Picture of Collective Nonclassical Light Emission and Dipole Blockade in Atom Arrays, Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 073602 (2020).
  31. I. Carusotto and C. Ciuti, Quantum fluids of light, Rev. Mod. Phys. 85, 299 (2013).
  32. C. Noh and D. G. Angelakis, Quantum simulations and many-body physics with light, Rep. Prog. Phys. 80, 016401 (2017).
  33. This can be realized [20] by applying a sufficiently strong magnetic field to ensure that only one atomic transition is near-resonant with the incident driving field of a given polarization, and excitation exchange on other dipole transitions is energetically suppressed.
  34. R. H. Lehmberg, Radiation from an N -Atom System. I. General Formalism, Phys. Rev. A 2, 883 (1970).
  35. M. Gross and S. Haroche, Superradiance: An essay on the theory of collective spontaneous emission, Phys. Rep. 93, 301 (1982).
  36. A. Asenjo-Garcia, J. D. Hood, D. E. Chang, and H. J. Kimble, Atom-light interactions in quasi-one-dimensional nanostructures: A Green's-function perspective, Phys. Rev. A 95, 033818 (2017).
  37. See Supplemental Material at http://link.aps.org/supplemental/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.L012047 for details on the linear response of the dual array, the effects of interactions between two arrays, group delay of transmitted photons, finite size effects, the numerical analysis of subradiant and superradiant states in finite dual arrays, and determining the E-field operator of a certain detection mode and the Fourier transform of the E-field.
  38. M. Fleischhauer, A. Imamoglu, and J. P. Marangos, Electromagnetically induced transparency: Optics in coherent media, Rev. Mod. Phys. 77, 633 (2005).
  39. P.-O. Guimond, A. Grankin, D. V. Vasilyev, B. Vermersch, and P. Zoller, Subradiant Bell States in Distant Atomic Arrays, Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 093601 (2019).
  40. K. Mølmer, Y. Castin, and J. Dalibard, Monte Carlo wave-function method in quantum optics, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 10, 524 (1993).
  41. M. Moreno-Cardoner, D. Goncalves, and D. E. Chang, Quantum nonlinear optics based on two-dimensional Rydberg atom arrays, Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 263602 (2021).
  42. L. Zhang, V. Walther, K. Mølmer, and T. Pohl, Photon-photon interactions in Rydberg-atom arrays, Quantum 6, 674 (2022).
  43. Y. Solomons and E. Shahmoon, Multi-channel waveguide QED with atomic arrays in free space, arXiv:2111.11515 [quant-ph].
  44. T. Peyronel, O. Firstenberg, Q.-Y. Liang, S. Hofferberth, A. V. Gorshkov, T. Pohl, M. D. Lukin, and V. Vuletić, Quantum nonlinear optics with single photons enabled by strongly interacting atoms, Nature (London) 488, 57 (2012).
  45. A. Paris-Mandoki, C. Braun, J. Kumlin, C. Tresp, I. Mirgorodskiy, F. Christaller, H. P. Büchler, and S. Hofferberth, Free-Space Quantum Electrodynamics with a Single Rydberg Superatom, Phys. Rev. X 7, 041010 (2017).
  46. T. Stolz, H. Hegels, M. Winter, B. Röhr, Y.-F. Hsiao, L. Husel, G. Rempe, and S. Dürr, Quantum-Logic Gate between Two Optical Photons with an Average Efficiency above 40%, Phys. Rev. X 12, 021035 (2022).
  47. J. Vaneecloo, S. Garcia, and A. Ourjoumtsev, Intracavity Rydberg Superatom for Optical Quantum Engineering: Coherent Control, Single-Shot Detection, and Optical π Phase Shift, Phys. Rev. X 12, 021034 (2022).
  48. M. F. Limonov, M. V. Rybin, A. N. Poddubny, and Y. S. Kivshar, Fano resonances in photonics, Nat. Photonics 11, 543 (2017).
  49. D. Witthaut, M. D. Lukin, and A. S. Sørensen, Photon sorters and QND detectors using single photon emitters, EPL 97, 50007 (2012).
  50. T. C. Ralph, I. Söllner, S. Mahmoodian, A. G. White, and P. Lodahl, Photon Sorting, Efficient Bell Measurements, and a Deterministic Controlled- Z Gate Using a Passive Two-Level Nonlinearity, Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 173603 (2015).
  51. F. Yang, M. M. Lund, T. Pohl, P. Lodahl, and K. Mølmer, Deterministic Photon Sorting in Waveguide QED Systems, Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 213603 (2022).
  52. S. Mahmoodian, M. Čepulkovskis, S. Das, P. Lodahl, K. Hammerer, and A. S. Sørensen, Strongly Correlated Photon Transport in Waveguide Quantum Electrodynamics with Weakly Coupled Emitters, Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 143601 (2018).
  53. A. S. Prasad, J. Hinney, S. Mahmoodian, K. Hammerer, S. Rind, P. Schneeweiss, A. S. Sørensen, J. Volz, and A. Rauschenbeutel, Correlating photons using the collective nonlinear response of atoms weakly coupled to an optical mode, Nat. Photonics 14, 719 (2020).
  54. S. Mahmoodian, G. Calajó, D. E. Chang, K. Hammerer, and A. S. Sørensen, Dynamics of Many-Body Photon Bound States in Chiral Waveguide QED, Phys. Rev. X 10, 031011 (2020).
  55. O. A. Iversen and T. Pohl, Strongly Correlated States of Light and Repulsive Photons in Chiral Chains of Three-Level Quantum Emitters, Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 083605 (2021).
  56. O. A. Iversen and T. Pohl, Self-ordering of individual photons in waveguide QED and Rydberg-atom arrays, Phys. Rev. Res. 4, 023002 (2022).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. Research 5, L012047– Published 27 March, 2023
  • Received 14 December 2022
  • Accepted 1 March 2023
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation