Observation of three-photon bound states in a quantum nonlinear medium
Name
1709.01478.pdf
Description
Submitted version
Size
9.71 MB
Format
Unknown
Checksum (MD5)
f9b4bab362d9ce64e817996f9b89c50d
Author(s)
Liang, Qi-Yu
Venkatramani, Aditya V
Cantu, Sergio H
Nicholson, Travis L
Gullans, Michael J
Gorshkov, Alexey V
Thompson, Jeff D
Chin, Cheng
Lukin, Mikhail D
Vuletic, Vladan
Date Issued
2018
Journal
Science
Publisher
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Version
Original manuscript
Abstract
© 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved. Bound States of massive particles, such as nuclei, atoms, or molecules, constitute the bulk of the visible world around us. By contrast, photons typically only interact weakly. We report the observation of traveling three-photon bound States in a quantum nonlinear medium where the interactions between photons are mediated by atomic Rydberg States. Photon correlation and conditional phase measurements reveal the distinct bunching and phase features associated with three-photon and two-photon bound States. Such photonic trimers and dimers possess shape-preserving wave functions that depend on the constituent photon number. The observed bunching and strongly nonlinear optical phase are described by an effective field theory of Rydberg-induced photon-photon interactions. These observations demonstrate the ability to realize and control strongly interacting quantum many-body States of light.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1126/SCIENCE.AAO7293
