Freiburg 2024 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 51: Quantum Optical Correlations

Q 51.1: Invited Talk

Thursday, March 14, 2024, 14:30–15:00, HS 1199

From the origin of antibunching to novel quantum light sources based on two-photon interference — •Martin Cordier, Luke Masters, Gabriele Maron, Xin-Xin Hu, Lucas Pache, Philipp Schneeweiss, Max Schemmer, Jürgen Volz, and Arno Rauschenbeutel — Department of Physics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10099 Berlin, Germany

Generating useful quantum states of light is key to many applications in quantum science and technology. Here, I will report on a new approach to controlling and tailoring the photon statistics of light fields. It is based on an effect, which we put into evidence in a recent experiment and which challenges the conventional notion that a single two-level emitter can only scatter one photon at a time [1]. There, we show that photon antibunching in resonance fluorescence arises from the destructive interference between two types of two-photon scattering processes, referred to as coherent and incoherent scattering. Building on this insight, we also study the collective enhancement of this incoherently scattered two-photon component when laser light propagates through an atomic ensemble. By adjusting the number of atoms and the laser detuning, we have full control over the two-photon interference, which allows us to tune the photon statistics of the transmitted light from strong photon bunching to antibunching [2,3].

[1] Masters et al., Nature Photonics 17, 972 (2023). [2] Prasad et al., Nature Photonics 1 (2020). [3] Cordier et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 183601 (2023).

Keywords: antibunching; cold atoms; quantum optics; nonlinear optics