Berlin 2014 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 32: Poster: Quantum gases, ultracold atoms and molecules

Q 32.86: Poster

Wednesday, March 19, 2014, 16:30–18:30, Spree-Palais

Large optical nonlinearities and single-photon switching using Rydberg Blockade — Simon Baur, •Daniel Tiarks, Gerhard Rempe, and Stephan Dürr — Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, 85748 Garching, Deutschland

Pairs of Rydberg atoms experience a large van-der-Waals interaction. Combining electromagnetically induced transparency with highly-lying Rydberg states creates a large optical nonlinearitiy at the single-photon level. We observe this nonlinearity as a saturation of the transmitted power as we increase the input power impinging on an ultra-cold gas of Rubidium atoms. The same nonlinearity causes antibunching that we observe in the pair-correlation function of the transmitted light. As an application, we implement an all-optical switch where a gate pulse changes the transmission of a subsequent target pulse. The gate pulse is stored in the medium and contains only one incoming photon on average. We further show that the stored light can be coherently retrieved after the target pulse passed the medium. Thus the coherence of the process is preserved and the switch might find applications in quantum information processing.