Generating single microwave photons in a circuit

Microwaves have widespread use in classical communication technologies, from long-distance broadcasts to short-distance signals within a computer chip. Like all forms of light, microwaves, even those guided by the wires of an integrated circuit, consist of discrete photons. To enable quantum communication between distant parts of a quantum computer, the signals must also be quantum, consisting of single photons, for example. However, conventional sources can generate only classical light, not single photons. One way to realize a single-photon source is to collect the fluorescence of a single atom. Early experiments measured the quantum nature of continuous radiation, and further advances allowed triggered sources of photons on demand. To allow efficient photon collection, emitters are typically placed inside optical or microwave cavities, but these sources are difficult to employ for quantum communication on wires within an integrated circuit. Here we demonstrate an on-chip, on-demand single-photon source, where the microwave photons are injected into a wire with high efficiency and spectral purity. This is accomplished in a circuit quantum electrodynamics architecture, with a microwave transmission line cavity that enhances the spontaneous emission of a single superconducting qubit. When the qubit spontaneously emits, the generated photon acts as a flying qubit, transmitting the quantum information across a chip. We perform tomography of both the qubit and the emitted photons, clearly showing that both the quantum phase and amplitude are transferred during the emission. Both the average power and voltage of the photon source are characterized to verify performance of the system. This single-photon source is an important addition to a rapidly growing toolbox for quantum optics on a chip.     

Continuous generation of single photons with controlled waveform in an ion-trap cavity system

The controlled production of single photons is of fundamental and practical interest; they represent the lowest excited quantum states of the radiation field, and have applications in quantum cryptography and quantum information processing. Common approaches use the fluorescence of single ions, single molecules, colour centres and semiconductor quantum dots. However, the lack of control over such irreversible emission processes precludes the use of these sources in applications (such as quantum networks) that require coherent exchange of quantum states between atoms and photons. The necessary control may be achieved in principle in cavity quantum electrodynamics. Although this approach has been used for the production of single photons from atoms, such experiments are compromised by limited trapping times, fluctuating atom-field coupling and multi-atom effects. Here we demonstrate a single-photon source based on a strongly localized single ion in an optical cavity. The ion is optimally coupled to a well-defined field mode, resulting in the generation of single-photon pulses with precisely defined shape and timing. We have confirmed the suppression of two-photon events up to the limit imposed by fluctuations in the rate of detector dark counts. The stream of emitted photons is uninterrupted over the storage time of the ion, as demonstrated by a measurement of photon correlations over 90 min.     

Quantum nonlinear optics with single photons enabled by strongly interacting atoms

The realization of strong nonlinear interactions between individual light quanta (photons) is a long-standing goal in optical science and engineering, being of both fundamental and technological significance. In conventional optical materials, the nonlinearity at light powers corresponding to single photons is negligibly weak. Here we demonstrate a medium that is nonlinear at the level of individual quanta, exhibiting strong absorption of photon pairs while remaining transparent to single photons. The quantum nonlinearity is obtained by coherently coupling slowly propagating photons to strongly interacting atomic Rydberg states in a cold, dense atomic gas. Our approach paves the way for quantum-by-quantum control of light fields, including single-photon switching, all-optical deterministic quantum logic and the realization of strongly correlated many-body states of light.     

Indistinguishable photons from a single-photon device

Single-photon sources have recently been demonstrated using a variety of devices, including molecules, mesoscopic quantum wells, colour centres, trapped ions and semiconductor quantum dots. Compared with a Poisson-distributed source of the same intensity, these sources rarely emit two or more photons in the same pulse. Numerous applications for single-photon sources have been proposed in the field of quantum information, but most--including linear-optical quantum computation--also require consecutive photons to have identical wave packets. For a source based on a single quantum emitter, the emitter must therefore be excited in a rapid or deterministic way, and interact little with its surrounding environment. Here we test the indistinguishability of photons emitted by a semiconductor quantum dot in a microcavity through a Hong-Ou-Mandel-type two-photon interference experiment. We find that consecutive photons are largely indistinguishable, with a mean wave-packet overlap as large as 0.81, making this source useful in a variety of experiments in quantum optics and quantum information.     

A single-photon detector in the far-infrared range

The far-infrared region (wavelengths in the range 10 microm-1 mm) is one of the richest areas of spectroscopic research, encompassing the rotational spectra of molecules and vibrational spectra of solids, liquids and gases. But studies in this spectral region are hampered by the absence of sensitive detectors--despite recent efforts to improve superconducting bolometers, attainable sensitivities are currently far below the level of single-photon detection. This is in marked contrast to the visible and near-infrared regions (wavelengths shorter than about 1.5 microm), in which single-photon counting is possible using photomultiplier tubes. Here we report the detection of single far-infrared photons in the wavelength range 175-210 microm (6.0-7.1 meV), using a single-electron transistor consisting of a semiconductor quantum dot in high magnetic field. We detect, with a time resolution of a millisecond, an incident flux of 0.1 photons per second on an effective detector area of 0.1 mm2--a sensitivity that exceeds previously reported values by a factor of more than 10(4). The sensitivity is a consequence of the unconventional detection mechanism, in which one absorbed photon leads to a current of 10(6)-10(12) electrons through the quantum dot. By contrast, mechanisms of conventional detectors or photon assisted tunnelling in single-electron transistors produce only a few electrons per incident photon.     

Experimental demonstration of a BDCZ quantum repeater node

Quantum communication is a method that offers efficient and secure ways for the exchange of information in a network. Large-scale quantum communication (of the order of 100 km) has been achieved; however, serious problems occur beyond this distance scale, mainly due to inevitable photon loss in the transmission channel. Quantum communication eventually fails when the probability of a dark count in the photon detectors becomes comparable to the probability that a photon is correctly detected. To overcome this problem, Briegel, Dür, Cirac and Zoller (BDCZ) introduced the concept of quantum repeaters, combining entanglement swapping and quantum memory to efficiently extend the achievable distances. Although entanglement swapping has been experimentally demonstrated, the implementation of BDCZ quantum repeaters has proved challenging owing to the difficulty of integrating a quantum memory. Here we realize entanglement swapping with storage and retrieval of light, a building block of the BDCZ quantum repeater. We follow a scheme that incorporates the strategy of BDCZ with atomic quantum memories. Two atomic ensembles, each originally entangled with a single emitted photon, are projected into an entangled state by performing a joint Bell state measurement on the two single photons after they have passed through a 300-m fibre-based communication channel. The entanglement is stored in the atomic ensembles and later verified by converting the atomic excitations into photons. Our method is intrinsically phase insensitive and establishes the essential element needed to realize quantum repeaters with stationary atomic qubits as quantum memories and flying photonic qubits as quantum messengers.     

Quantum interference between two single photons emitted by independently trapped atoms

When two indistinguishable single photons are fed into the two input ports of a beam splitter, the photons will coalesce and leave together from the same output port. This is a quantum interference effect, which occurs because two possible paths-in which the photons leave by different output ports-interfere destructively. This effect was first observed in parametric downconversion (in which a nonlinear crystal splits a single photon into two photons of lower energy), then from two separate downconversion crystals, as well as with single photons produced one after the other by the same quantum emitter. With the recent developments in quantum information research, much attention has been devoted to this interference effect as a resource for quantum data processing using linear optics techniques. To ensure the scalability of schemes based on these ideas, it is crucial that indistinguishable photons are emitted by a collection of synchronized, but otherwise independent sources. Here we demonstrate the quantum interference of two single photons emitted by two independently trapped single atoms, bridging the gap towards the simultaneous emission of many indistinguishable single photons by different emitters. Our data analysis shows that the observed coalescence is mainly limited by wavefront matching of the light emitted by the two atoms, and to a lesser extent by the motion of each atom in its own trap.     

Resolving photon number states in a superconducting circuit

Electromagnetic signals are always composed of photons, although in the circuit domain those signals are carried as voltages and currents on wires, and the discreteness of the photon's energy is usually not evident. However, by coupling a superconducting quantum bit (qubit) to signals on a microwave transmission line, it is possible to construct an integrated circuit in which the presence or absence of even a single photon can have a dramatic effect. Such a system can be described by circuit quantum electrodynamics (QED)-the circuit equivalent of cavity QED, where photons interact with atoms or quantum dots. Previously, circuit QED devices were shown to reach the resonant strong coupling regime, where a single qubit could absorb and re-emit a single photon many times. Here we report a circuit QED experiment in the strong dispersive limit, a new regime where a single photon has a large effect on the qubit without ever being absorbed. The hallmark of this strong dispersive regime is that the qubit transition energy can be resolved into a separate spectral line for each photon number state of the microwave field. The strength of each line is a measure of the probability of finding the corresponding photon number in the cavity. This effect is used to distinguish between coherent and thermal fields, and could be used to create a photon statistics analyser. As no photons are absorbed by this process, it should be possible to generate non-classical states of light by measurement and perform qubit-photon conditional logic, the basis of a logic bus for a quantum computer.     

正负电子三光子湮灭的光子角分布

本文采用两种不同的方法全面计算正负电子三光子湮灭的光子角分布,两种方法所得结果基本一致。本文还给出了描述三光子发射方向的随机变量α_1,α_2,α_3的联合概率密度函数。     

Observation of squeezed light from one atom excited with two photons

Single quantum emitters such as atoms are well known as non-classical light sources with reduced noise in the intensity, capable of producing photons one by one at given times. However, the light field emitted by a single atom can exhibit much richer dynamics. A prominent example is the predicted ability of a single atom to produce quadrature-squeezed light, which has fluctuations of amplitude or phase that are below the shot-noise level. However, such squeezing is much more difficult to observe than the emission of single photons. Squeezed beams have been generated using macroscopic and mesoscopic media down to a few tens of atoms, but despite experimental efforts, single-atom squeezing has so far escaped observation. Here we generate squeezed light with a single atom in a high-finesse optical resonator. The strong coupling of the atom to the cavity field induces a genuine quantum mechanical nonlinearity, which is several orders of magnitude larger than in typical macroscopic media. This produces observable quadrature squeezing, with an excitation beam containing on average only two photons per system lifetime. In sharp contrast to the emission of single photons, the squeezed light stems from the quantum coherence of photon pairs emitted from the system. The ability of a single atom to induce strong coherent interactions between propagating photons opens up new perspectives for photonic quantum logic with single emitters.     

Single photons on demand from a single molecule at room temperature

The generation of non-classical states of light is of fundamental scientific and technological interest. For example, 'squeezed' states enable measurements to be performed at lower noise levels than possible using classical light. Deterministic (or triggered) single-photon sources exhibit non-classical behaviour in that they emit, with a high degree of certainty, just one photon at a user-specified time. (In contrast, a classical source such as an attenuated pulsed laser emits photons according to Poisson statistics.) A deterministic source of single photons could find applications in quantum information processing, quantum cryptography and certain quantum computation problems. Here we realize a controllable source of single photons using optical pumping of a single molecule in a solid. Triggered single photons are produced at a high rate, whereas the probability of simultaneous emission of two photons is nearly zero--a useful property for secure quantum cryptography. Our approach is characterized by simplicity, room temperature operation and improved performance compared to other triggered sources of single photons.     

InGaN太阳能电池材料的辐射性质

对采用分子束外延生长的In1-xGaxN薄膜与金属有机化学气相沉积生长的GaAs和Ga0.51In0.49P薄膜太阳能电池材料进行了对比研究,探讨了全太阳光谱材料系In1-xGaxN合金薄膜受到高能粒子辐射后的电学特性变化规律。实验结果显示:GaAs和Ga0.51In0.49P的光致发光信号强度受到照射的强烈压制,而受到类似剂量照射后InN的光致发光信号强度没有下降;In1-xGaxN合金薄膜材料的电学特性表现出用高能质子(2MeV)照射比当前常用的GaAs和GaInP光伏材料有更高的电阻。这表明,In1-xGaxN对高能粒子损伤没有GaAs和GaInP那么敏感,从而给空间受到强辐射的高效太阳能电池提供了巨大的应用潜力。     

嵌入微腔中的量子点散射一维波导中的单光子

本文采用全量子力学的方法研究了嵌入微腔中的量子点散射一维波导中的单光子问题。通过实空间的方法得到了单光子透射和反射振幅。分析表明,通过调节激光脉冲的强度和频率可以实现对一维波导中单光子传输特性的控制。     

晶体硅光伏电池的材料优化

介绍了调制阳光频率实现太阳光波上下量子剪裁的两种方式:掺杂稀土离子和微纳米结构化硅基材料.以Lu2O3为基质,采用共沉淀法制备了Tb3+和Yb3+共掺的下转换粉末;以NaYF4为基质,采用热水法制备了Er、Yb和Tm共掺的上转换粉末.实验证明Lu2O3:Tb3+,Yb3+纳米粉末中,一个高能光子可剪裁成2个974 nm的近红外光子.而NaYF4:Er3+,Yb3+,Tm3+共掺的上转换材料也有显著的上转换效果,仅用1 122 nm激光照射0.25 cm2实验硅光电池片可增加电池光电流密度0.06 mA/cm2.设计了具有纳米结构的PIN.简述了通过梯度掺杂制结增强光伏效应的原因.     

Generation of ultraviolet entangled photons in a semiconductor

Entanglement is one of the key features of quantum information and communications technology. The method that has been used most frequently to generate highly entangled pairs of photons is parametric down-conversion. Short-wavelength entangled photons are desirable for generating further entanglement between three or four photons, but it is difficult to use parametric down-conversion to generate suitably energetic entangled photon pairs. One method that is expected to be applicable for the generation of such photons is resonant hyper-parametric scattering (RHPS): a pair of entangled photons is generated in a semiconductor via an electronically resonant third-order nonlinear optical process. Semiconductor-based sources of entangled photons would also be advantageous for practical quantum technologies, but attempts to generate entangled photons in semiconductors have not yet been successful. Here we report experimental evidence for the generation of ultraviolet entangled photon pairs by means of biexciton resonant RHPS in a single crystal of the semiconductor CuCl. We anticipate that our results will open the way to the generation of entangled photons by current injection, analogous to current-driven single photon sources.     

光的粒子性与多普勒频移

从光的粒子性出发,运用狭义相对论中能量和动量的关系式,再根据原子发光过程中能量和动量的守恒定律,分析计算了运动原子和静止原子发射的光子的频率,从而得到了与波动光学中多普勒频移公式完全相同的数学表达式.     

定距发射/接收干耦合检测探头设计与实验研究

针对固体火箭发动机(SRM)壳体复合材料在加工、存储过程中可能出现脱黏等缺陷的问题,提出了一种干耦合检测方法;并进行了实验验证。基于探头的声匹配理论,针对复合材料表面无法使用耦合剂及由此产生的超声波能量损失过大的问题,提出了采用超声变幅杆实现声匹配及能量集中功能的方法;基于探头的电匹配理论,针对探头与超声波发射/接收装置之间能量转化效率低的问题,设计了探头的匹配电路。对预制有三个不同直径缺陷的复合材料壳体通过不同的角度进行了检测实验,并将匹配后探头和未匹配探头的检测结果进行了对比。结果表明该方法能够较好的对复合材料的缺陷进行识别,经过电匹配后的探头可将检测灵敏度提高2~3倍。     

空间目标单光子探测建模及实验验证

为了对空间单光子探测系统的科学设计和性能评估提供有效的指导, 我们针对空间目标单光子探测系统进行仿真建模, 分析并推导了激光回波功率和回波光子数公式, 利用所建立的模型对探测系统进行仿真,得到激光回波光子数模型仿真值; 通过具体的地面模拟实验对应用在空间目标探测中的单光子探测器（SPAD）进行定标后,得到定标性能曲线,再通过具体的室内目标探测实验得到激光回波光子数实验值。两者进行对比,结果表明,实验验证所建模型有效且可行。     

TM偏振光子隧道效应

利用电子与光子隧道现象的相似性，我们证明：TM光子在全反射破坏结构中隧道问题，可以转变为具有不同有效质量的电子在一维夹势垒中隧道问题．通过这种方法，我们计算TM光子的隧道透射系数T．