Multiphoton blockade by multi-tone drive

TL;DR

This paper proposes a multi-tone drive scheme to realize multiphoton blockade in a Kerr resonator, enabling controlled photon generation and potential applications in quantum technologies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel multi-tone driving method to achieve multiphoton blockade, enhancing photon control in Kerr resonators beyond single-tone approaches.

Findings

Demonstrated two-photon and three-photon blockades using multi-tone drives.

Showed enhancement of photon generation in the weak driving regime.

Photon distribution can be tuned by adjusting drive amplitudes.

Abstract

Multiphoton blockade provides an efficient way to achieve entangled photon sources and leads to wide applications in modern quantum technologies. Here, we propose a scheme to realize multiphoton blockade by a multi-tone drive. Specifically, we demonstrate two-photon and three-photon blockades in a single-mode optical Kerr resonator using a two-tone and a three-tone drive, respectively. In comparison with the single-tone drive, except for the blockade of the $(n+1)$th photon excitation due to large detuning, the key mechanism in this scheme is the sequently resonant excitations of all the $m$-photon states ($m\leq n$) by the $n$-tone drive, which lead to the enhancement of photon generation and the demonstration of multiphoton blockade in the weak driving regime. Moreover, the photon distribution within the system can be adjusted on demand by tuning the relative amplitudes of the driving fields for different frequencies. The scheme can be extended to other bosonic systems and be applied to demonstrate other multiphoton physical effects.