Light from an ion crystal: bunching or antibunching?

Abstract

Photon statistics divides light sources into three different categories, characterized by bunched, antibunched or uncorrelated photon arrival times. Single atoms, ions, molecules, or solid state emitters display antibunching of photons, while classical thermal sources exhibit photon bunching. Here we demonstrate a light source in free space, where the photon statistics depends on the direction of observation, undergoing a continuous crossover between photon bunching and antibunching. We employ two trapped ions, observe their fluorescence under continuous laser light excitation, and record the spatially resolved autocorrelation function $g^{(2)}(\tau )$ with a movable Hanbury Brown and Twiss detector. Varying the detector position we find a minimum value for antibunching, $g^{(2)}(0)=0.60(5)$ and a maximum of $g^{(2)}(0)=1.46(8)$ for bunching, demonstrating that this source radiates fundamentally different types of light alike. The observed variation of the autocorrelation function is understood in the Dicke model of heralded entangled states and the observed maximum and minimum values are modeled, taking independently measured experimental parameters into account.

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Cited by in corpus (20)

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• Coherence in Cooperative Photon Emission from Indistinguishable Quantum Emitters
• Coherent transfer of the transverse momentum of an optical vortex beam to the motion of a single trapped ion
• Nanoscale continuous quantum light sources based on driven dipole emitter arrays
• Signatures of cooperative emission in photon coincidence: Superradiance versus measurement-induced cooperativity
• Photon-photon Correlations from a Pair of Strongly Coupled Two-Level Emitters
• Fluorescence intensity correlation imaging with high resolution and elemental contrast using intense x-ray pulses
• Collective effects in the photon statistics of thermal atomic ensembles
• Resonance fluorescence of two asymmetrically pumped and coupled two-level systems
• Quantum interference in the resonance fluorescence of a $J=1/2$-$J^{\prime }=1/2$ atomic system: Quantum beats, nonclassicality, and non-Gaussianity
• The role of polaron dressing in superradiant emission dynamics
• Controlling coherence between waveguide-coupled quantum dots
• Addressing the correlation of Stokes-shifted photons emitted from two quantum emitters
• Fluorescence calorimetry of an ion crystal
• Emission photon statistics in collectively interacting dipole atom arrays in the low-intensity limit
• Gain-modified emission dynamics between two quantum emitters in a plasmonic gain cavity system
• Optical signatures of coherence in molecular dimers
• Controlling the spontaneous emission of trapped ions
• Interference of cavity light by a single atom acting as a double slit
• Different Types of Coherence: Young-type Interference versus Dicke Superradiance