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NONLINEAR OPTICS

Guiding light to non-classicality

Nature Photonics volume 14, pages 716–718 (2020)Cite this article

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The manipulation of the quantum properties of light involves its technically challenging strong interaction with matter. Now, an experiment shows that when light propagates through a waveguide it only takes a weakly coupled line of atoms to single out its photons, or bunch them together, unveiling and controlling its quantum nature.

Lasers output electromagnetic waves made of photons emitted at random time intervals. This means that by detecting a photon one has no information of when the next one will arrive. Such a property makes the light look as classical as it can be, hiding aspects of its inherent quantum nature. Changing this behaviour requires manipulating the photons, making them, for example, clump together in a determined number, or separating them one at a time, changing the photon statistics of the electromagnetic wave and potentially unveiling then the ‘quantumness’ of light. If the photon statistics cannot be described by any classical statistical distribution, we call the light ‘quantum’, or ‘non-classical’, light1.

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Fig. 1: Processes changing the photon statistics of the guided electromagnetic field.

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  1. Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias Físicas y Matemáticas, Universidad de Concepción, Concepción, Chile

    Pablo Solano

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  1. Pablo Solano
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Correspondence to Pablo Solano.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Solano, P. Guiding light to non-classicality. Nat. Photonics 14, 716–718 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-020-00719-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-020-00719-1

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