Hannover 2016 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 26: Quantum Optics IV

Q 26.1: Talk

Tuesday, March 1, 2016, 14:30–14:45, f442

Quadrature squeezed photons from a two-level system — Carsten Schulte, Jack Hansom, Alex Jones, •Clemens Matthiesen, Claire Le Gall, and Mete Atature — Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

The interaction of a two-level atom with a resonant light field is of fundamental importance in quantum optics. Despite its conceptual simplicity it gives rise to intriguing phenomena, such as the Mollow triplet, antibunching and coherent light scattering.
While quantum optics experiments have traditionally been confined to the realms of atomic optics, the past 15 years have seen a branching out from ‘natural’ to ‘artificial atoms’ such as semiconductor quantum dots.
Enabled by the high scattering rate of a resonantly driven self-assembled InGaAs quantum dot we verify a prediction from the 1980s that the quantum fluctuations in the stream of single photons are below the fundamental level set by the vacuum fluctuations [1]. We employ homodyne intensity correlations to observe quadrature squeezing in single-atom resonance fluorescence for the first time [2].

[1] D.F. Walls and P. Zoller, PRL 47, 709 (1981).

[2] C. H. H. Schulte et al., Nature 525, 222 (2015).