Heidelberg 2015 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 76: Ultracold Plasmas and Rydberg Systems IV (with A)

Q 76.6: Talk

Friday, March 27, 2015, 15:45–16:00, P/H2

Single-Photon Transistor Mediated by Interstate Rydberg Interactions — •Hannes Gorniaczyk¹, Christoph Tresp¹, Ivan Mirgorodskiy¹, Johannes Schmidt¹, Helmut Fedder², and Sebastian Hofferberth¹ — ¹5. Physikalisches Institut, Universität Stuttgart, Germany — ²3. Physikalisches Institut, Universität Stuttgart, Germany

We present the realization of an all-optical transistor by mapping gate and source photons into strongly interacting Rydberg excitations with different principal quantum numbers in an ultracold atomic ensemble. A switch contrast of 40% is obtained for a coherent gate input with mean photon number one. We show that over 60 source photons can be attenuated with a single gate photon demonstrating a high-gain optical transistor. We use this optical transistor for the nondestructive detection of a single Rydberg atom with a fidelity of 79%. The read-out of gate photons marks a crucial step for the implementation of quantum information protocols. For this reason, we study the coherence of gate photon spin waves in the context of source-gate interaction.