Photon blockade via three-body interactions: toward high-purity and bright single-photon sources

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel photon blockade mechanism using three-body interactions, enabling high-purity, high-brightness single-photon sources that outperform previous methods and are robust against noise.

Contribution

Introduction of a new photon blockade mechanism based on three-body interactions that overcomes the purity-brightness trade-off in single-photon generation.

Findings

Achieves perfect photon blockade across broad parameters.

Breaks the purity-brightness trade-off, enabling high purity and brightness.

Demonstrates robustness against thermal noise and avoids unwanted oscillations.

Abstract

Photon blockade is vital for single-photon generation, but current schemes with conventional and unconventional photon blockade face critical limitations like the purity-brightness trade-off, hindering the generation of high-performance single-photons. To overcome these limitations, we introduce a fundamentally new photon blockade mechanism by utilizing three-body interactions between a single photonic mode and two qubits. This kind of interaction intrinsically cuts off the excitation path to the two-photon state, resulting in a perfect photon blockade effect. The mechanism operates across a broad parameter range, free from the constraints of strong coupling or weak driving. Remarkably, it breaks the purity-brightness trade-off, enabling the simultaneous achievement of extreme purity and high brightness, both significantly outperforming previous mechanisms. Furthermore, this approach demonstrates robustness against thermal noise and avoids unwanted oscillations in the time-delayed correlation function. This work provides a path for generating high-purity, high-brightness, and robust single-photon sources, a key resource for quantum technologies.