Trapping a Free-propagating Single-photon into an Atomic Ensemble as a Quantum Stationary Light Pulse

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the first experimental trapping of a free-propagating single-photon into a cold atomic ensemble using quantum stationary light pulses, preserving quantum properties and enhancing photon-photon interaction potential.

Contribution

It introduces the first experimental realization of quantum stationary light pulses trapping single photons, enabling longer interaction times in atomic media.

Findings

Successfully trapped a single-photon in atomic ensemble

Preserved quantum properties of the photon during trapping

Enhanced potential for photon-photon interactions

Abstract

Efficient photon-photon interaction is one of the key elements for realizing quantum information processing. The interaction, however, must often be mediated through an atomic medium due to the bosonic nature of photons, and the interaction time, which is critically linked to the efficiency, depends on the properties of the atom-photon interaction. While the electromagnetically induced transparency effect does offer the possibility of photonic quantum memory, it does not enhance the interaction time as it fully maps the photonic state to an atomic state. The stationary light pulse (SLP) effect, on the contrary, traps the photonic state inside an atomic medium with zero group velocity, opening up the possibility of the enhanced interaction time. In this work, we report the first experimental demonstration of trapping a free-propagating single-photon into a cold atomic ensemble via the quantum SLP (QSLP) process. We conclusively show that the quantum properties of the single-photon state are preserved well during the QSLP process. Our work paves the way to new approaches for efficient photon-photon interactions, exotic photonic states, and many-body simulations in photonic systems.