Dissipative Many-body Quantum Optics in Rydberg Media

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical framework for understanding how quantized light propagates in Rydberg media with dissipation, enabling analysis of quantum optical devices and many-body photon dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a new theoretical approach to model dissipative light propagation in Rydberg-EIT media, facilitating the study of quantum devices and many-body photon phenomena.

Findings

Analyzes the output structure of single-photon filters and subtractors.

Provides insights into dissipative many-body photon dynamics.

Enables design of advanced quantum optical devices.

Abstract

We develop a theoretical framework for the dissipative propagation of quantized light in interacting optical media under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). The theory allows us to determine the peculiar spatiotemporal structure of the output of two complementary Rydberg-EIT-based light-processing modules: the recently demonstrated single-photon filter and the recently proposed single-photon subtractor, which, respectively, let through and absorb a single photon. In addition to being crucial for applications of these and other optical quantum devices, the theory opens the door to the study of exotic dissipative many-body dynamics of strongly interacting photons in nonlinear nonlocal media.