Quantum Optics in Maxwell's Fish Eye Lens with Single Atoms and Photons

TL;DR

This paper explores how Maxwell's fish eye lens can mediate long-range quantum interactions between atoms, enabling entanglement and quantum information processing, with analytical and numerical validation of the effects and potential experimental realization.

Contribution

It demonstrates the effective infinite-range dipole-dipole interactions mediated by Maxwell's fish eye lens at the single-photon and atom level, including analytical models and experimental feasibility.

Findings

Long-range dipole-dipole interactions enable entanglement.

Photon exchange rate is well described by focused diffraction-limited absorption.

Loss effects impact the fidelity of entangling operations.

Abstract

We investigate the quantum optical properties of Maxwell's two-dimensional fish eye lens at the single-photon and single-atom level. We show that such a system mediates effectively infinite-range dipole-dipole interactions between atomic qubits, which can be used to entangle multiple pairs of distant qubits. We find that the rate of the photon exchange between two atoms, which are detuned from the cavity resonances, is well described by a model, where the photon is focused to a diffraction-limited area during absorption. We consider the effect of losses on the system and study the fidelity of the entangling operation via dipole-dipole interaction. We derive our results analytically using perturbation theory and the Born-Markov approximation and then confirm their validity by numerical simulations. We also discuss how the two-dimensional Maxwell's fish eye lens could be realized experimentally using transformational plasmon optics.