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Observation of optical-fibre Kerr nonlinearity at the single-photon level

Nature Photonics volume 3, pages 95–98 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Optical fibres have proved to be an important medium for manipulating and generating light in applications including soliton transmission1, light amplification2, all-optical switching3 and supercontinuum generation4. In the quantum regime, fibres may prove useful for ultralow-power all-optical signal processing5 and quantum information processing6. Here, we demonstrate the first experimental observation of optical nonlinearity at the single-photon level in an optical fibre. Taking advantage of the large nonlinearity and managed dispersion of photonic crystal fibres7,8, we report very small (1 × 10−7 to ∼1 × 10−8 rad) conditional phase shifts induced by weak coherent pulses that contain one or less than one photon per pulse on average. We discuss the feasibility of quantum information processing using optical fibres, taking into account the observed Kerr nonlinearity, accompanied by ultrafast response time and low induced loss.

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Figure 1: Experimental set-up.
Figure 2: Nonlinear phase shifts as a function of mean photon number per pump pulse.
Figure 3: Probe power dependence of the measured phase shift and phase noise.
Figure 4: Normalized probe phase shifts as a function of the time delay between pump and probe pulses.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to K. Koshino and H. Ishihara for fruitful discussions. This research was supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid for Creative Scientific Research (no. 17GS1204) and a Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (no. 20009351) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Tohoku University, Sendai, 980-8577, Miyagi, Japan

    Nobuyuki Matsuda, Yasuyoshi Mitsumori, Hideo Kosaka & Keiichi Edamatsu

  2. CREST, Japan Science and Technology Agency, 4-1-8 Honmachi, Kawaguchi, 332-0012, Saitama, Japan

    Nobuyuki Matsuda, Ryosuke Shimizu, Yasuyoshi Mitsumori, Hideo Kosaka & Keiichi Edamatsu

  3. PRESTO, Japan Science and Technology Agency, 4-1-8 Honmachi, Kawaguchi, 332-0012, Saitama, Japan

    Ryosuke Shimizu

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  1. Nobuyuki Matsuda
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Correspondence to Nobuyuki Matsuda.

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Matsuda, N., Shimizu, R., Mitsumori, Y. et al. Observation of optical-fibre Kerr nonlinearity at the single-photon level. Nature Photon 3, 95–98 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2008.292

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