Erlangen 2022 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 16: Quantum Effects I
Q 16.9: Talk
Tuesday, March 15, 2022, 12:30–12:45, Q-H13
A Photon Pair Source from a Single Atom — •Luke Masters, Martin Cordier, Xinxin Hu, Gabriele Maron, Lucas Pache, Maximilian Schemmer, Jürgen Volz, and Arno Rauschenbeutel — Department of Physics, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, 10099 Berlin, Germany
Photon emission from a single quantum emitter can be described as an interference phenomena between coherent and incoherently scattered light. In this picture, perfect photon anti-bunching in the light scattered by an atom arises from the complete destructive interference of the two-photon components of these two light fields.
The coherent and incoherently scattered light have distinct spectral properties, making it possible to separate them from each other by applying selective spectral filtering. In turn, this will modify the photon statistics of the emitted light, and can transform the perfect anti-bunching into strong photon-bunching.
In our experiment, we employ narrow-band spectral filtering to isolate the incoherent two-photon wavefunction from the fluorescence of a single, laser cooled Rb85 atom confined in an optical dipole trap. Without filtering, the measured second order correlation function shows a strong photon anti-bunching of g(2)(0) ≈ 0, while a photon bunching of g(2)(0) ≫ 1 is measured when filtering is applied. This is in agreement with our expectation that the incoherently scattered part consists purely of energy-time-entangled photon pairs.