Freiburg 2024 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 51: Quantum Optical Correlations
Q 51.3: Talk
Thursday, March 14, 2024, 15:15–15:30, HS 1199
Superradiant bursts of light from cascaded quantum emitters: Experiment on photon-photon correlations — Constanze Bach, Christian Liedl, Arno Rauschenbeutel, •Philipp Schneeweiss, and Felix Tebbenjohanns — Department of Physics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
Recently, superradiant bursts of light have been, for the first time, experimentally observed for a cascaded quantum system. This was realized using an ensemble of waveguide-coupled two-level atoms that exhibit chiral, i.e., propagation direction-dependent coupling to the waveguide mode. Here, we experimentally study this collective radiative decay of a fully inverted atomic ensemble and measure the second order quantum correlation function, g(2)(t1,t2), of the light emitted by the atoms into the waveguide. We observe g(2)≈2 in the beginning of the decay (t1=0,t2=0), followed by a decrease to g(2)(t1,t2=t1)≈ 1 within the characteristic time scale of the burst dynamics. This can be interpreted by assuming that, following an initially independent emission, the atoms synchronize during their decay, leading to an emission that more and more resembles the photon statistics of a coherent state. In addition to these observations, we find an anti-correlation of photon detection events, i.e., g(2)(t1,t2)<1, in certain parameter regions in which t1 ≠ t2. Our measurement outcomes can be well described with a model based on the truncated Wigner approximation. Our findings contribute to understanding the fundamentals of light–matter interaction and help engineering protocols for the generation of non-classical light. [1] C. Liedl et al., arXiv:2211.08940
Keywords: Superradiance; Collective light-matter interaction; Cascaded quantum systems