Atomic-waveguide quantum electrodynamics

TL;DR

This paper introduces atomic waveguides made from ordered atom arrays that support non-decaying guided modes, enabling tunable, long-range, and quantum interactions between impurity qubits without photonic structures.

Contribution

It proposes a new method to use atomic arrays as quantum waveguides for mediating tunable qubit interactions, highlighting their intrinsic quantum non-linearities and potential for many-body physics.

Findings

Atomic arrays support non-decaying guided modes.

These modes enable tunable, long-range qubit interactions.

Atomic waveguides exhibit strong non-linearities unlike classical ones.

Abstract

Atom arrays are a new type of quantum light-matter interface. Here, we propose to employ one-dimensional ordered arrays as atomic waveguides. These arrays support optical guided modes that do not decay into free space. We show that these modes can be harnessed to mediate tunable, long-range interactions between additional "impurity qubits" coupled to the chain, without need for photonic structures. The efficient coupling between qubits and atomic waveguides enables the realization of tunable qubit-qubit interactions, which can be short- or long-range, dissipative or coherent, as well as chiral. Moreover, owing to the two-level nature of atoms, these waveguides are intrinsically quantum. In contrast to classical waveguides, where photons do not interact with each other, atomic waveguides display strong non-linearities, which create a tunable dissipative channel for qubit-qubit interactions, and opens the door to the exploration of many-body physics between guided photons. This physics is universal as it only relies on photon interference and can also be observed with other types of quantum emitters, such as those in molecular or solid-state systems.