Dispersionless subradiant photon storage in one-dimensional emitter chains

Abstract

Atomic emitter ensembles couple collectively to the radiation field. Although an excitation on a single emitter may be short-lived, a collection of them can contain a photon several orders of magnitude longer than the single emitter lifetime. We provide the exact conditions for optimal absorption, long-lived and dispersionless storage, and release, of a single photon in a sub-wavelength one-dimensional lattice of two-level emitters. In particular, we detail two storage schemes. The first is based on the uncovering of approximate flat sections in the single-photon spectrum, such that a single photon can be stored as a wave packet with effective zero group velocity. For the second scheme we exploit the angular dependence of the interactions induced between the emitters and mediated via exchange of virtual photons, which on a ring gives rise to an effective trapping potential for the photon. In both cases, we are able to obtain, within current experimentally accessible parameters, high-fidelity photon storage for times hundreds of times longer than the single emitter lifetime.

7+4 pages, 5+4 figures, comments welcome

References in corpus (7)

• Chiral Quantum Optics
• Quantum Communication through Spin Chain Dynamics: an Introductory Overview
• Subradiant Bell states in distant atomic arrays
• Electron wavepacket propagation and entanglement in a chain of coupled quantum dots
• Long-range interacting many-body systems with alkaline-earth-metal atoms
• Phase-imprinted multiphoton subradiant states
• Optimized geometries for cooperative photon storage in an impurity coupled to a two-dimensional atomic array

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Green's function approach to interacting lattice polaritons and optical nonlinearities in subwavelength arrays of quantum emitters
• Topological photon pumping in quantum optical systems
• Fate of the Mollow triplet in strongly-coupled atomic arrays
• Nonradiant multiphoton states in quantum ring oligomers
• Hybrid sub- and superradiant states in emitter arrays with quantized motion
• Spatial averaging for light reflection and transmission through cold atom arrays
• Subradiance generation in a chain of two-level atoms with a single excitation
• Cooperative Decay of N Atoms in a Ring Configuration