Single-photon transport through an atomic chain coupled to a one-dimensional nanophotonic waveguide

Abstract

We study the dynamics of a single-photon pulse traveling through a linear atomic chain coupled to a one-dimensional (1D) single mode photonic waveguide. We derive a time-dependent dynamical theory for this collective many-body system which allows us to study the real time evolution of the photon transport and the atomic excitations. Our analytical result is consistent with previous numerical calculations when there is only one atom. For an atomic chain, the collective interaction between the atoms mediated by the waveguide mode can significantly change the dynamics of the system. The reflectivity of a photon can be tuned by changing the ratio of coupling strength and the photon linewidth or by changing the number of atoms in the chain. The reflectivity of a single-photon pulse with finite bandwidth can even approach 100%. The spectrum of the reflected and transmitted photon can also be significantly different from the single-atom case. Many interesting physical phenomena can occur in this system such as the photonic band-gap effects, quantum entanglement generation, Fano-like interference, and superradiant effects. For engineering, this system may serve as a single-photon frequency filter, single-photon modulation, and may find important applications in quantum information.

Non-Markovian dynamics of a qubit due to single-photon scattering in a waveguide

“…A distinctive feature of our open dynamics is that the bath (the waveguide field) is initially in a well-defined single-photon state [43,44]. Toward this task, we tackle in full the time evolution of multiple excitations (in contrast to those limited to the one-excitation sector [43,[45][46][47][48]), a problem that has become important recently [30,31,33,[49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57].Intuitively, one may expect that the dynamics is fully Markovian in the infinite-waveguide case and NM in the semi-infinite case due to the atom-mirror delay time. We show that this expectation is inaccurate in general, mostly because it does not account for a fundamental source of NM behavior namely the wavepacket bandwidth.…”

Arrays of strongly coupled atoms in a one-dimensional waveguide

“…In the limit of low light intensity and for stationary atoms the simulations of the specific 1D electrodynamics are exact and reveal an interplay between super-radiant and subradiant eigenmodes of collective atomic excitations. The interference between the broad super-radiant and narrow subradiant collective modes can lead to narrow Fano resonances [14,17] in transmission, analogously to the destructive single-atom resonances in the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) [37]. We find that, depending on the interatomic separation and control of the detunings, light can be employed to engineer atomic excitations with nontrivial symmetries.…”

“…Hybrid systems, where atoms are integrated with nanophotonic devices, have experienced a rapid development in recent years. Waveguides [1][2][3] and nanofibers [4][5][6][7][8][9][10] closely mimic one-dimensional (1D) light propagation [11][12][13][14][15][16][17] that may have applications in quantum networks, light circuitry, and quantum switches [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26], or high-precision spectroscopy [27]. The strong light-mediated interactions between the atoms, and atom-mediated interactions between photons, could be utilized in the preparation of novel quantum many-body systems [28,29] for atoms and light.…”

“…The effects of a photon pulse propagation in a chain of atoms in a waveguide were studied in Ref. [14] in the similar linear regime where each atom responds to light as a classical oscillator. Fano-like resonances were identified in a two-atom system and the frequency dependence of the reflectivity was numerically analyzed for the pulse propagation in atom chains.…”

Waveguide quantum electrodynamics in squeezed vacuum

“…Actually, the dependence on the absolute position comes from the fact that the squeezed vacuum is not vacuum but generated by a coherent light source. The phase of a coherent source is important for the dynamics of the emitter system [12] and it is sel-Recently, photon transport in a one-dimensional (1D) waveguide coupled to quantum emitters (well known as "waveguide-QED") has attracted much attention due to its possible applications in quantum device and quantum information [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. In these previous studies, the photon modes in the waveguide are usually considered to be ordinary vacuum modes.…”