SAMOP 2023 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 35: Quantum Optics: Cavity and Waveguide QED II
Q 35.8: Talk
Wednesday, March 8, 2023, 16:15–16:30, E001
Waveguide QED with Rydberg superatoms — •Nina Stiesdal1, Lukas Ahlheit1, Kevin Kleinbeck2, Jan Kumlin3, Anna Spier1, Jan de Haan1, Hans-Peter Büchler2, and Sebastian Hofferberth1 — 1IAP, University of Bonn — 2ITP3, University of Stuttgart — 3CCQ, Aarhus University
The field of Waveguide QED investigates how light in a single mode propagates through a system of localized quantum emitters. If the coupling between individual photons and emitters is sufficiently strong, the photons can mediate an effective interaction between the emitters, creating a many-body system. The cascaded interaction with saturated emitters can be interpreted as a photon-photon interaction.
We realize effective two-level emitters by exploiting the Rydberg blockade effect. By confining N∼10.000 atoms to a single blockaded volume, the ensemble only supports a single excitation creating a so-called Rydberg superatom. Due to the collective nature of the excitation, the superatom effectively represents a single emitter coupling strongly to single photons. The directional emission of the superatom into the initial probe mode realizes a waveguide-like system in free-space without any actual light-guiding elements.
This talk will discuss how we scale this system from one to few strongly coupled superatoms to study how the propagation of quantized light fields through a small emitter chain results in photon-photon correlations and entanglement between the emitters. We also show how we use controlled dephasing of the collective excitation into collective dark states to subtract exact photon numbers from an incoming pulse.