Joint subnatural-linewidth and single-photon emission from resonance fluorescence

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method to achieve a joint subnatural-linewidth and antibunched single-photon emission from resonance fluorescence by interfering the emitted light with a coherent beam, revealing new quantum correlations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel interference technique to simultaneously realize narrow spectral linewidth and antibunching in resonance fluorescence, overcoming previous limitations.

Findings

Restoration of joint subnatural linewidth and antibunching via interference.

Discovery of a new quantum correlation with a plateau of antibunching.

Proposal of a new concept of perfect single-photon source.

Abstract

Resonance fluorescence---the light emitted when exciting resonantly a two-level system---is a popular quantum source as it seems to inherit its spectral properties from the driving laser and its statistical properties from the two-level system, thus providing a subnatural-linewidth single-photon source. However, these two qualities do not actually coexist in resonance fluorescence, since an optical target detecting these antibunched photons will either be spectrally broad itself and not benefit from the spectrally narrow source, or match spectrally with the source but in this case the antibunching will be spoiled. We first explain this failure through a decomposition of the field-emission and how this gets affected by frequency resolution. We then show how to restore the sought joint subnatural linewidth and antibunched properties, by interfering the resonance fluorescence output with a coherent beam. We finally discuss how the signal that is eventually generated in this way features a new type of quantum correlations, with a plateau of antibunching which suppresses much more strongly close photon pairs. This introduces a new concept of perfect single-photon source.