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Single-photon tunneling

I. I. Smolyaninov·A. V. Zayats·A. Gungor·C. C. Davis
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Abstract

Strong evidence of a single-photon tunneling effect, a direct analog of single-electron tunneling, has been obtained in the measurements of light tunneling through individual subwavelength pinholes in a thick gold film covered with a layer of polydiacetylene. The transmission of some pinholes reached saturation because of the optical nonlinearity of polydiacetylene at a very low light intensity of a few thousands photons per second. This result is explained theoretically in terms of "photon blockade", similar to the Coulomb blockade phenomenon observed in single-electron tunneling experiments. The single-photon tunneling effect may find many applications in the emerging fields of quantum communication and information processing.

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I. I. Smolyaninov, A. V. Zayats, A. Gungor, C. C. Davis. 2001-10-11. Single-photon tunneling. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.88.187402

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