Beam splitting and Hong-Ou-Mandel interference for stored light

Abstract

Storing and release of a quantum light pulse in a medium of atoms in the tripod configuration are studied. Two complementary sets of control fields are defined, which lead to independent and complete photon release at two stages. The system constitutes a new kind of a flexible beam splitter in which the input and output ports concern photons of the same direction but well separated in time. A new version of Hong-Ou-Mandel interference is discussed.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Light Propagation in Optically Dressed Media

“…If the initial state of the medium is coherently prepared one can observe new effects: two resonant pulses may parametrically generate a third one [15]. The polariton description in the case of the tripod configuration, both in the classical and quantum versions, is similar to that for the Λ system but requires some modifications [16,17]. Two polaritons are necessary to describe the adiabatic evolution: they are now built of the electromagnetic component and two atomic excitations.…”

“…Changing the control fields so that φ → π 2 − φ while θ = π 2 means an exchange of the polaritons. In particular the sample may serve as a beam splitter in the time domain [17]: one has to store a single photon in a combination of the atomic excitations using a configuration of the control fields corresponding to some angle φ = φ 0 = const. If a combination of the control field corresponding to a different angle φ = φ 1 = const is applied the photon will be released with the probability cos 2 (φ 1 − φ 0 ).…”

Modulation of single-photon-level wave packets with two-component electromagnetically induced transparency

“…For now, EIT has become an important method for photonic quantum memory -an essential component of quantum information science [5,6]. Furthermore, coherent control of the spinor polaritons would lead to numbers of useful quantum state engineering.Particularly, a tripod-type four-level EIT scheme, which offers more freedom and possibilities for photon storage and manipulation, has drawn significant attentions in the last few years [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. In the tripod-EIT configuration, three ground atomic levels are coupled with an excited level by two signal fields and one control field [15] or one signal field and two control fields.…”

“…In the tripod-EIT configuration, three ground atomic levels are coupled with an excited level by two signal fields and one control field [15] or one signal field and two control fields. As there exist a pair of orthogonal dark-state polaritons, whose coherence depends on the amplitude and phase of the control fields, beam splitting of a signal pulse could be achieved based on this tripod-type photon storage [13,17]. In comparison with other beam-splitting methods [20][21][22], the tripod-EIT scheme highlights the simplicity and high degree of controllability.…”

“…Another two strong control fields, with the Rabi frequencies Ω c1 and Ω c2 , are related to the transitions |c 1 → |a and |c 2 → |a respectively. Assuming the single-photon detuning of the control fields δ c1 = δ c2 = 0 MHz, we get arXiv:1501.06713v2 [quant-ph] 3 May 2015 the steady eigenstate of the atom-photon polaritons as following [13],…”