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arXiv · 1506.06316

Cavity-free nondestructive detection of a single optical photon

Keyu Xia·Mattias Johnsson·Peter L. Knight·Jason Twamley
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Abstract

Detecting a single photon without absorbing it is a long standing challenge in quantum optics. All experiments demonstrating the nondestructive detection of a photon make use of a high quality cavity. We present a cavity free scheme for nondestructive single-photon detection. By pumping a nonlinear medium we implement an inter-field Rabi-oscillation which leads to a ?pi phase shift on weak probe coherent laser field in the presence of a single signal photon without destroying the signal photon. Our cavity-free scheme operates with a fast intrinsic time scale in comparison with similar cavity-based schemes. We implement a full real-space multimode numerical analysis of the interacting photonic modes and confirm the validity of our nondestructive scheme in the multimode case.

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Keyu Xia, Mattias Johnsson, Peter L. Knight, Jason Twamley. 2015-06-21. Cavity-free nondestructive detection of a single optical photon. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.116.023601

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