Quantum reflection of single photons in a cold Rydberg atomic gas

TL;DR

This paper proposes a scheme to achieve quantum reflection of single photons using a cold Rydberg atomic gas with electromagnetically induced transparency, enabling tunable potential wells for quantum photonic applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method for quantum reflection of photons in Rydberg gases, facilitating the development of single-photon switches and quantum wave-particle experiments.

Findings

Deep, tunable attractive potential wells can be created using stored gate photons.

The scheme enables quantum reflection of single photons in a controlled manner.

Potential applications include quantum devices observing wave-particle duality.

Abstract

We propose and analyze a scheme for realizing the quantum reflection of single photons in a cold Rydberg atomic gas via electromagnetically induced transparency, by which a deep and tunable attractive potential well can be prepared by using stored gate photons. Such a scheme is promising for designing dispersion-type single-photon switches, and may be taken as a quantum device for observing the wave and particle natures of photons simultaneously.