Hannover 2010 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 52: Quantum Information: Concepts and Methods IV / Photons and Nonclassical Light I

Q 52.7: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 11. März 2010, 15:30–15:45, E 214

Efficient all-optical switching using slow light within a hollow fiber — •Sebastian Hofferberth¹, Thibault Peyronal², Michal Bajcsy², Alexander Zibrov², Vladan Vuletic¹, and Mikhail Lukin¹ — ¹Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms, Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 — ²Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms, Department of Physics, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139

In analogy with an electronic transistor, an all-optical switch is a device in which one light beam can fully control another. Realization of efficient all-optical switches is a long-standing goal in optical science and engineering. If integrated with modern fiber-optical technologies, such devices may have important applications for optical communication and computation. Optical switches operating at a fundamental limit of one photon per switching event would further enable the realization of key protocols from quantum information science.

Here, we present an all-optical switch that makes use of cold atoms trapped inside the hollow core of a photonic crystal fiber and quantum optical techniques for generating large nonlinear interaction between light beams. We show that this switch is activated at tiny energies corresponding to few hundred photons per pulse. We also present recent experiments using stationary light techniques to further the nonlinear optical efficiency.