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Strongly correlated photons on a chip

Nature Photonics volume 6, pages 93–96 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

Optical nonlinearities at the single-photon level are key ingredients for future photonic quantum technologies1. Prime candidates for the realization of the strong photon–photon interactions necessary for implementing quantum information processing tasks2, as well as for studying strongly correlated photons3,4,5,6 in an integrated photonic device setting, are quantum dots embedded in photonic-crystal nanocavities. Here, we report strong quantum correlations between photons on picosecond timescales. We observe (i) photon antibunching upon resonant excitation of the lowest-energy polariton state, proving that the first cavity photon blocks the subsequent injection events, and (ii) photon bunching when the laser field is in two-photon resonance with the polariton eigenstates of the second Jaynes–Cummings manifold7,8, demonstrating that two photons at this colour are more likely to be injected into the cavity jointly than they would otherwise. Together, these results demonstrate unprecedented strong single-photon nonlinearities, paving the way for the realization of a quantum optical Josephson interferometer9 or a single-photon transistor10.

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Figure 1: Resonant scattering spectroscopy of a quantum dot strongly coupled to a photonic-crystal cavity.
Figure 2: From Poissonian light to antibunched and bunched photon streams.
Figure 3: Calculated and measured autocorrelation functions gpulsed(2)(0) for different cavity and laser detunings.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Centre of Competence in Research, Quantum Photonics (NCCR QP), a research instrument of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), and a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Investigator Grant (A.I.). The authors thank I. Carusotto for helpful discussions.

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Author notes

  1. Martin Winger

    Present address: Present address: Thomas J Watson, Sr., Laboratory of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA,

  2. Andreas Reinhard and Thomas Volz: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Quantum Electronics, ETH Zurich, Zurich, 8093, Switzerland

    Andreas Reinhard, Thomas Volz, Martin Winger, Kevin J. Hennessy & Ataç Imamoğlu

  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, Rochester, 14627, New York, USA

    Antonio Badolato

  3. School of Engineering and Applied Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, 02138, Massachusetts, USA

    Evelyn L. Hu

Authors
  1. Andreas Reinhard
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  6. Evelyn L. Hu
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  7. Ataç Imamoğlu
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Contributions

A.R. and T.V. conducted the experiments, analysed the data and performed the simulations. M.W. made essential contributions to the experiment in its early stages. A.B., K.J.H. and E.L.H. fabricated the structure that ensures maximal dot–cavity coupling. A.R., T.V. and A.I. conceived the experiment, discussed the results and wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Thomas Volz or Ataç Imamoğlu.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Reinhard, A., Volz, T., Winger, M. et al. Strongly correlated photons on a chip. Nature Photon 6, 93–96 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2011.321

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