All-optical switching in rubidium vapor

Abstract

We report on an all-optical switch that operates at low light levels. It consists of laser beams counterpropagating through a warm rubidium vapor that induce an off-axis optical pattern. A switching laser beam causes this pattern to rotate even when the power in the switching beam is much lower than the power in the pattern. The observed switching energy density is very low, suggesting that the switch might operate at the single-photon level with system optimization. This approach opens the possibility of realizing a single-photon switch for quantum information networks and for improving transparent optical telecommunication networks.

20 pages, 6 figures; published in Science; http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/308/5722/672

References in corpus (7)

• Formation and Propagation of Matter Wave Soliton Trains
• Nonlinear Optics and Quantum Entanglement of Ultra-Slow Single Photons
• Low-light-level nonlinear optics with slow light
• Observation of absorptive photon switching by quantum interference
• Parametric Self-Oscillation via Resonantly Enhanced Multiwave Mixing
• A conditional-phase switch at the single-photon level
• Dynamic optical bistability in resonantly enhanced Raman generation

Cited by in corpus (50)

• All-Optical Routing of Single Photons by a One-Atom Switch Controlled by a Single Photon
• Single-Photon Switch based on Rydberg Blockade
• Evanescent light-matter Interactions in Atomic Cladding Wave Guides
• Observation of two-photon absorption at low power levels using tapered optical fibers in rubidium vapor
• Absolute absorption on rubidium D1 line: including resonant dipole-dipole interactions
• Nonlinear interaction between two heralded single photons
• Demonstration of the Interaction between Two Stopped Light Pulses
• Photonic properties of one-dimensionally-ordered cold atomic vapors under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency
• Electromagnetic wave propagation in spatially homogeneous yet smoothly time-varying dielectric media
• Dynamical Autler-Townes control of a phase qubit
• Optical switching and bistability in a four-level atomic systems
• Optical control of Faraday rotation in hot Rb vapor
• Exploiting vibrational strong coupling to make an optical parametric oscillator out of a Raman laser
• Quantum Multiple Scattering
• Transverse optical instability patterns in semiconductor microcavities: polariton scattering and low-intensity all-optical switching
• Optical bistability at low light level due to collective atomic recoil
• Multimode optical fiber beam-by-beam cleanup
• Low-Loss All-Optical Zeno Switch in a Microdisk Cavity Using EIT
• Strong Coherent Light Amplification with Double Electromagnetically Induced Transparency Coherences
• Quantum state transfer via Bloch oscillations
• Spontaneous emergence of free-space optical and atomic patterns
• All-Optical Switching with Transverse Optical Patterns
• Analytic Few Photon Scattering in Waveguide QED
• Coupled-mode theory for electromagnetic pulse propagation in dispersive media undergoing a spatio-temporal perturbation - exact derivation, numerical validation and peculiar wave mixing
• Synchronous control of dual-channel all-optical multi-state switching
• Intrinsic optical bistability of thin films of linear molecular aggregates: The one-exciton approximation
• Interaction-free all-optical switching at low light Intensities in a multi-atom cavity QED system
• All-optical switching in a continuously operated and strongly coupled atom-cavity system
• Degenerate four-wave mixing as a low-power source of squeezed light
• Ultralow-power all-optical switching via a chiral Mach-Zehnder interferometer
• Quantum transistor realized with a single $\Lambda$-level atom coupled to the microtoroidal cavity
• Efficient, High-Fidelity Single-Photon Switch Based on Waveguide-Coupled Cavities
• Transverse optical and atomic pattern formation
• Micro-resonator based all-optical transistor
• Directional optical switching and transistor functionality using optical parametric oscillation in a spinor polariton fluid
• Large optical gain from four-wave mixing instabilities in semiconductor quantum wells
• Optically controlled waveplate at a telecom wavelength using a ladder transition in Rb atoms for all-optical switching and high speed Stokesmetric Imaging
• Reversible self-Kerr-nonlinearity in an N-type atomic system through a switching field
• Nonlinear magneto-optical resonances for systems with J~100 observed in K2 molecules
• Tunable nonlinearity in atomic response to a bichromatic field
• Far-off resonance conditional phase-shifter using the ac-Stark shift
• Optically controlled orbital angular momentum generation in a polaritonic quantum fluid
• All-optical pulse switching with a periodically driven dissipative quantum system
• Characterizing micro-macro transitions with an atomic-vapor-based linear optical amplifier
• Externally Controlled Lotka-Volterra Dynamics in a Linearly Polarized Polariton Fluid
• All-optical transistor action by off-resonant activation at laser threshold
• All-optical switching in planar semiconductor microcavities
• Doubly-resonant-cavity electromagnetically induced transparency
• Routing single photons with quantum emitters coupled to nanostructures
• Spatial fluctuations in an optical parametric oscillator below threshold with an intracavity photonic crystal