Cavity-free nondestructive detection of a single optical photon

TL;DR

This paper introduces a cavity-free method for nondestructively detecting a single photon using nonlinear media and Rabi oscillations, enabling faster detection without photon absorption.

Contribution

The authors propose a novel cavity-free scheme for nondestructive single-photon detection utilizing inter-field Rabi oscillations in a nonlinear medium.

Findings

Achieves phase shift without photon absorption

Operates faster than cavity-based schemes

Validated through multimode numerical analysis

Abstract

Detecting a single photon without absorbing it is a long standing challenge in quantum optics. All experiments demonstrating the nondestructive detection of a photon make use of a high quality cavity. We present a cavity free scheme for nondestructive single-photon detection. By pumping a nonlinear medium we implement an inter-field Rabi-oscillation which leads to a ?pi phase shift on weak probe coherent laser field in the presence of a single signal photon without destroying the signal photon. Our cavity-free scheme operates with a fast intrinsic time scale in comparison with similar cavity-based schemes. We implement a full real-space multimode numerical analysis of the interacting photonic modes and confirm the validity of our nondestructive scheme in the multimode case.