English

Measurement-induced strong Kerr nonlinearity for weak quantum states of light

Quantum Physics 2017-08-02 v1

Abstract

Strong nonlinearity at the single photon level represents a crucial enabling tool for optical quantum technologies. Here we report on experimental implementation of a strong Kerr nonlinearity by measurement-induced quantum operations on weak quantum states of light. Our scheme coherently combines two sequences of single photon addition and subtraction to induce a nonlinear phase shift at the single photon level. We probe the induced nonlinearity with weak coherent states and characterize the output non-Gaussian states with quantum state tomography. The strong nonlinearity is clearly witnessed as a change of sign of specific off-diagonal density matrix elements in Fock basis.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1706.07018,
  title  = {Measurement-induced strong Kerr nonlinearity for weak quantum states of light},
  author = {Luca S. Costanzo and Antonio S. Coelho and Nicola Biagi and Jaromír Fiurášek and Marco Bellini and Alessandro Zavatta},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.07018},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

6 pages, 3 figures