Dynamical Blockade in a Single-Mode Bosonic System

Abstract

We introduce a dynamical blockade phenomenon occurring in a nonlinear bosonic mode induced by a combination of continuous and pulsed excitations. We find that the underlying mechanism for the blockade is general, enhancing antibunching in the strongly nonlinear regime and inducing it in the weakly nonlinear regime, without fine-tuning the system parameters. Moreover, this mechanism shows advantages over existing blockade mechanisms and is suitable for implementation in a wide variety of systems due to its simplicity and universality.Photon blockade is a nonlinear optical effect that suppresses multiple-photon occupancy in a quantum mode favouring the single photon state [1]. Strong photon blockade is a natural source for single photons, which are essential for many rising technologies [2], such as quantum communication [3,4], computation [5] and cryptography [6]. Accessing the regime of photon blockade is also a prerequisite for realizing quantum many-body phenomena, e.g., the fractional quantum Hall effect [7], the superfluid to Mott insulator transition [8-10] and the strongly correlated Tonks-Girardeau gas [11] of photons.

Conventional and Unconventional Photon Statistics

“…This is true as well for other configurations that cannot be accommodated by Equation (1) in this form, or because they add even more components. One could mention examples from works that consider pulsed excitation, [87,88] non-Markovian effects, [89] that go beyond the rotating-wave approximation, [90] involve additional modes (three in refs. [91][92][93]), different types of nonlinearity, for example, a 2 in ref.…”

Dynamical blockade in a bosonic Josephson junction using optimal coupling

“…This is intuitively expected since for t ≥ T the two-photon population has been transferred to mode 2 and the modes are decoupled. As in the case of dynamical blockade [35], in order to detect single photons a shutter can be placed in the emission and be opened after t = T .…”

“…Moreover, these results are accompanied by larger onephoton populations and are maintained for longer time windows, corresponding thus to higher emission efficiency and easier detection. The suggested methodology is not restricted to the system studied, but can also be exploited in other related contexts, for example the original dynamical blockade framework of a driven dissipative nonlinear bosonic mode [35], to find the optimal driving field which can improve the single-photon emission statistics.…”

Interplay between polarization and quantum correlations of confined polaritons

“…Upon truncation, these expressions reduce to Eqs. (19) and (20) given in the main text. It is also useful to introduce similar correlations in the linear polarization basis, which can be of practical interest.…”

“…Experimental observations of this so-called unconventional blockade effect have been reported in the optical [17] and microwave domains [18]. Further extensions have also been proposed, such as non-reciprocal or dynamical blockade effects for single-mode Kerr resonators [19,20], or the use of "phase space filling saturation" in semiconductors to provide an effective nonlinearity [21].…”