Zero-area single photon pulses

Abstract

Broadband single photons are usually considered not to couple efficiently to atomic gases because of the large mismatch in bandwidth. Contrary to this intuitive picture, here we demonstrate that the interaction of ultrashort single photons with a dense resonant atomic sample deeply modifies the temporal shape of their wavepacket mode without degrading their non-classical character, and effectively generates zero-area single-photon pulses. This is a clear signature of strong transient coupling between single broadband (THz-level) light quanta and atoms, with intriguing fundamental implications and possible new applications to the storage of quantum information.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (5)

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• Diluted maximum-likelihood algorithm for quantum tomography
• Remote Entanglement between a Single Atom and a Bose-Einstein Condensate
• Atom-Resonant Heralded Single Photons by Interaction-Free Measurement
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Cited by in corpus (12)

• Engineering temporal-mode-selective frequency conversion in off-the-shelf nonlinear optical waveguides: From theory to experiment
• Attosecond Transient Absorption in Dense Gases: Exploring the Interplay between Resonant Pulse Propagation and Laser-Induced Line Shape Control
• Superradiance-Mediated Photon Storage for Broadband Quantum Memory
• Complete elimination of nonlinear light-matter interactions with broadband ultrafast laser pulses
• Single-photon hologram of a zero-area pulse
• Quantum arbitrary waveform generator
• Optimization of Broadband $\Lambda$-type Quantum Memory Using Gaussian Pulses
• Huygens-Fresnel principle: Analyzing consistency at the photon level
• Broadband Quantum Memory in Atomic Ensembles
• How much time does a photon spend as an atomic excitation before being transmitted?
• Optimized Phase Masks for Absorption of Ultra-Broadband Pulses by Narrowband Atomic Ensembles
• Single-shot high-resolution spectroscopy of single-photon-level optical pulses using a virtually imaged phased-array and single-photon avalanche diode array