Cross Modulation of Two Laser Beams at the Individual-Photon Level
Abstract
Deterministic photon-photon interactions are a long-standing goal in optical science. Using an atomic ensemble inside a cavity, we demonstrate the mutual cross modulation of two continuous light beams at the level of individual photons. The originally uncorrelated beams derived from independent lasers become anticorrelated, as evidenced by an equal-time cross-correlation function g(2)= 0.89(1), showing that one photon in one beam extinguishes a photon in the other beam with a probability of 11(1)%. With further technical improvements, our approach should enable the nondestructive continuous detection of traveling optical photons.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 12, 2014
- Accession Number
- ADA619989
Entities
People
- Kristin M Beck
- Michael Gullans
- Mikhail Lukin
- Qian Lin
- Vladan Vuletić
- Wenlan Chen
Organizations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology