Light-shift-induced photonic nonlinearities

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simplified method to generate strong self- and cross-Kerr nonlinearities in photonic systems using light-induced Stark shifts, scalable with atom number, enhancing photon-photon interactions.

Contribution

The authors present a new, simpler experimental scheme for producing significant photonic nonlinearities via light-induced Stark shifts, scalable with atom number, surpassing previous methods in strength.

Findings

Achieves nonlinearities comparable to electromagnetically induced transparency with fewer complexities.

Scalability of nonlinearity strength with the number of atoms.

Potential for photon-photon interactions several orders of magnitude stronger.

Abstract

We propose a new method to produce self- and cross-Kerr photonic nonlinearities, using light-induced Stark shifts due to the interaction of a cavity mode with atoms. The proposed experimental set-up is considerably simpler than in previous approaches, while the strength of the nonlinearity obtained with a single atom is the same as in the setting based on electromagnetically induced transparency. Furthermore our scheme can be applied to engineer effective photonic nonlinear interactions whose strength increases with the number of atoms coupled to the cavity mode, leading to photon-photon interactions several orders of magnitude larger than previously considered possible.