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A photon–photon quantum gate based on a single atom in an optical resonator

Nature volume 536, pages 193–196 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

That two photons pass each other undisturbed in free space is ideal for the faithful transmission of information, but prohibits an interaction between the photons. Such an interaction is, however, required for a plethora of applications in optical quantum information processing1. The long-standing challenge here is to realize a deterministic photon–photon gate, that is, a mutually controlled logic operation on the quantum states of the photons. This requires an interaction so strong that each of the two photons can shift the other’s phase by π radians. For polarization qubits, this amounts to the conditional flipping of one photon’s polarization to an orthogonal state. So far, only probabilistic gates2 based on linear optics and photon detectors have been realized3, because “no known or foreseen material has an optical nonlinearity strong enough to implement this conditional phase shift”4. Meanwhile, tremendous progress in the development of quantum-nonlinear systems has opened up new possibilities for single-photon experiments5. Platforms range from Rydberg blockade in atomic ensembles6 to single-atom cavity quantum electrodynamics7. Applications such as single-photon switches8 and transistors9,10, two-photon gateways11, nondestructive photon detectors12, photon routers13 and nonlinear phase shifters14,15,16,17,18 have been demonstrated, but none of them with the ideal information carriers: optical qubits in discriminable modes. Here we use the strong light–matter coupling provided by a single atom in a high-finesse optical resonator to realize the Duan–Kimble protocol19 of a universal controlled phase flip (π phase shift) photon–photon quantum gate. We achieve an average gate fidelity of (76.2 ± 3.6) per cent and specifically demonstrate the capability of conditional polarization flipping as well as entanglement generation between independent input photons. This photon–photon quantum gate is a universal quantum logic element, and therefore could perform most existing two-photon operations. The demonstrated feasibility of deterministic protocols for the optical processing of quantum information could lead to new applications in which photons are essential, especially long-distance quantum communication and scalable quantum computing.

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Figure 1: Schematic of our setup.
Figure 2: The photon–photon gate mechanism.
Figure 3: Truth table of the controlled-NOT photon–photon gate.
Figure 4: Reconstructed density matrix of the entangled two-photon state created by the gate from the separable input state |DD〉.

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Acknowledgements

We thank N. Kalb, A. Neuzner, A. Reiserer and M. Uphoff for discussions and support throughout the experiment. This work was supported by the European Union (Collaborative Project SIQS) and by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung via IKT 2020 (Q.com-Q) and by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft via the excellence cluster Nanosystems Initiative Munich (NIM). S.W. was supported by the doctorate programme Exploring Quantum Matter (ExQM).

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Author notes

  1. Bastian Hacker and Stephan Welte: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Hans-Kopfermann-Strasse 1, Garching, 85748, Germany

    Bastian Hacker, Stephan Welte, Gerhard Rempe & Stephan Ritter

Authors
  1. Bastian Hacker
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  2. Stephan Welte
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the experiment, the analysis of the results and the writing of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stephan Ritter.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Figure 1 Ramsey-like spectrum to calibrate the atomic state rotations.

After initialization of the atom in |↑〉, we perform the same sequence of three Raman pulses as in the gate protocol. The final population in |↑〉 is determined as a function of the two-photon detuning of the employed Raman pair with respect to the frequency difference between the two atomic qubit states. The solid dots are measured data with statistical error bars (standard error of the mean). The solid line is the fit of a theoretical model based on the sequence of rotations. It yields results for the Rabi frequency of the atomic spin rotation, an offset of the two-photon detuning, as for example, induced by ambient magnetic fields, and the light shift imposed by the Raman laser pair, all with ±3 kHz precision.

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Hacker, B., Welte, S., Rempe, G. et al. A photon–photon quantum gate based on a single atom in an optical resonator. Nature 536, 193–196 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature18592

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