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Ultra-secure quantum communications and potentially game-changing quantum computers are based on the basis of phons.
The light particles can be placed in a superposition and entangled in two quantum states.
To create these states, researchers need to work with light that has a small number of photons or just one photon. It can be difficult to setup a system that can generate states where there is a lot of light.
Theorists at the University of Chicago's PME have developed a new scheme for trapping single photons. The mechanism allows two sources to emit a selected number of photons into a cavity before destructive interference cancels out both sources, creating a "wall" that prevents further photons from entering.
This new mechanism could make it easier to create quantum light without using complicated systems.
The research was published in Science Advances.
A wall of interference.
A typical system for trapping single photons involves using materials that have an extremely large optical nonlinearity, which causes the photons in the cavity to interact with one another strongly. Adding just one photon can shift the resonance frequencies in such systems. One photon can enter, but not a second, if one shines a laser on the cavity.
The problem with this mechanism is that it requires large optical nonlinearities and very low dissipation, a combination that is difficult to achieve in most platforms.
The system proposed by Clerk's research team uses two different sources to simultaneously emit light into a weak hole. Once the selected number of photons are captured in the cavity, the sources cancel each other out with destructive interference, creating a "wall" that blocks the photons.
There are many potential applications. The system doesn't have to use special materials that are not normal in this way, which opens the door to several different platforms, including as a tool for quantum simulation.
The basic mechanism can be applied to all types of radiation. It is possible to use it to generate and control microwave-frequency photons. New ways to process and store quantum information could be enabled by this. The clerk's group is working with experimentalists to implement the scheme.
The system is being looked at as a potential way to entangle photon, where observation of one photon automatically provides information about the photon it is entangled with, no matter how far apart they are.
Clerk said that the scheme could work in a lot of different systems. It really expands the potential of light-based quantum technologies if you don't need special materials.
Andrew Lingenfelter and his team wrote about Unconditional Fock state generation using arbitrarily weak photonic nonlinearities in Science Advances. There is a DOI for this.
Science Advances has journal information.
Researchers created an interference 'wall' to capture single photons.
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