Cavity-assisted spontaneous emission of a single three-level atom as a single-photon source

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method to generate high-efficiency, nearly one-photon Fock state pulses from a three-level atom in a cavity, with controllable wave packet shape, useful for quantum communication.

Contribution

It introduces a cavity-assisted Raman scheme for producing identical, shape-controlled single-photon pulses from a three-level atom, advancing quantum light source technology.

Findings

High-efficiency generation of one-photon Fock states

Wave packet shape independent of pump interaction shape

Controlled manipulation of outgoing photon wave packets

Abstract

Stimulated Raman interaction of a classically pumped single three-level $\Lambda$-type atom in a resonator cavity featuring both radiative and unwanted losses is studied. It is shown that in the regime of stimulated adiabatic Raman passage the excited outgoing wave packet of the cavity-assisted electromagnetic field can be prepared in a one-photon Fock state with high efficiency. In this regime, the spatio-temporal shape of the wave packet does not depend on the interaction shape of the pump field, provided that the interaction of the atom with the pump is time-delayed with respect to the interaction of the atom with the cavity-assisted field. Therefore, the scheme can be used to generate a sequence of identical radiation pulses each of almost one-photon Fock state. It is further shown that the spatio-temporal shape of the outgoing wave packet can be manipulated by controlling the time of interaction between the atom and the cavity-assisted electromagnetic field.