Freiburg 2019 – scientific programme

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FM: Fall Meeting

FM 18: Quantum Networks: Interfaces & Hybrid Systems

FM 18.1: Invited Talk

Monday, September 23, 2019, 16:30–17:00, 1015

Generation of strongly correlated photons using nanofiber-coupled atoms — Adarsh Prasad¹, Jakob Hinney¹, Klemens Hammerer², Sahand Mahmoodian², Samuel Rind¹, Philipp Schneeweiss^1,3, Anders S. Sørensen⁴, Jürgen Volz^1,3, and •Arno Rauschenbeutel^1,3 — ¹Atominstitut, TU Wien, Stadionallee 2, 1020 Vienna, Austria — ²Institute for Theoretical Physics, Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute), Leibniz University Hannover, Appelstraße 2, 30167 Hannover, Germany — ³Department of Physics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10099 Berlin, Germany — ⁴Center for Hybrid Quantum Networks (Hy-Q), Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Blegdamsvej 17, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark

Typical schemes for generating correlated states of light require a highly nonlinear medium strongly coupled to an optical mode. Such approaches are often impaired by unavoidable dissipative processes which reduce the nonlinearity and cause photon loss. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the opposite approach, where a highly dissipative, weakly coupled medium can be harnessed to generate and study strongly correlated states of light. Specifically, we show that light transmitted through an ensemble of atoms that weakly couple to the optical mode of an optical nanofiber exhibits antibunched or bunched photon statistics depending on the optical depth of the atomic ensemble. This opens a new avenue for generating nonclassical states of light and for exploring photon correlations in non-equilibrium systems using a mix of nonlinear and dissipative processes.