Controllable single-photon transport mediated by a time-modulated Jaynes–Cummings model

Abstract

Controllable single-photon scattering in a one-dimensional waveguide coupled to a Jaynes-Cummings structure containing a time-modulated two-level atom interacting with a single-mode cavity is investigated. The photon transmission and reflection amplitudes are calculated by using an effective Floquet Hamiltonian in real space. The results show that the coupling between the atom and the cavity mode can dynamically be tuned via periodically modulating the atomic transition frequency. As a consequence, the scattering behaviors of the waveguide photons can be actively manipulated, and a controllable single-photon switch with high on-off ratio could be realized. More interestingly, the switch works well within a wide frequency region, i.e., the transmission of both resonant and off-resonant waveguide photons can be effectively switched on or off with appropriate system parameters. Furthermore, the proposed dynamically tunable switching scheme is robust against atomic dissipation associated with the help of atom-cavity coupling mismatch. Such single-photon device can be used as an elementary unit for various quantum information processing.