Ultrastrong photon superbunching from electron shelving and time integral

TL;DR

This paper introduces a universal mechanism for generating ultrastrong photon superbunching with high correlations using electron shelving and time integration, enabling new quantum optics applications.

Contribution

It proposes a novel, experimentally feasible method to produce ultrastrong photon correlations through a cascaded quantum system involving electron shelving and fluorescence time integration.

Findings

Achieves ultrastrong second-order and higher-order photon correlations.

Provides a flexible way to vary correlation degrees and light frequency.

Demonstrates high experimental feasibility with current techniques.

Abstract

Photon correlation is at the heart of quantum optics and has important applications in quantum technologies. Here we propose a universally applicable mechanism that can generate the superbunching light with ultrastrong second-order and higher-order correlations hitherto unreachable. This mechanism arises from the combined effect of electron shelving and time integral of fluorescence based on a cascaded quantum system comprising an emitter and a filter or a cavity QED system, and has high experimental feasibility according to current experimental techniques. Besides, both the correlation degrees and the frequency of the light can be flexibly varied over broad ranges. Both the research and technological applications on strong correlations can be extensively facilitated due to this readily accessible and manipulated mechanism for generating photon correlation.