Conditional $\pi$-Phase Shift of Single-Photon-Level Pulses at Room Temperature

Abstract

The development of useful photon-photon interactions can trigger numerous breakthroughs in quantum information science, however this has remained a considerable challenge spanning several decades. Here we demonstrate the first room-temperature implementation of large phase shifts ($\approx \pi$) on a single-photon level probe pulse (1.5us) triggered by a simultaneously-propagating few-photon-level signal field. This process is mediated by $R{b}^{87}$ vapor in a double-$\Lambda$ atomic configuration. We use homodyne tomography to obtain the quadrature statistics of the phase-shifted quantum fields and perform maximum-likelihood estimation to reconstruct their quantum state in the Fock state basis. For the probe field, we have observed input-output fidelities higher than 90$\%$ for phase-shifted output states, and high overlap (over 90\%) with a theoretically perfect coherent state. Our noise-free, four-wave-mixing-mediated photon-photon interface is a key milestone towards developing quantum logic and nondemolition photon detection using schemes such as coherent photon conversion.

arXiv comment10 pages, 6 figures

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