We study the possibility of using single rare-earth ions coupled to a photonic cavity with high cooperativity for performing non-destructive measurements of photons, which would be useful for global quantum networks and photonic quantum computing. We calculate the achievable fidelity as a function of the parameters of the rare-earth ion and photonic cavity, which include the ion's optical and spin dephasing rates, the cavity linewidth, the single photon coupling to the cavity, and the detection efficiency. We suggest a promising experimental realization using current state of the art technology in Nd:YVO4.
@article{arxiv.1608.06679,
title = {Non-destructive photon detection using a single rare earth ion coupled to a photonic cavity},
author = {Chris O'Brien and Tian Zhong and Andrei Faraon and Christoph Simon},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1608.06679},
year = {2016}
}