We experimentally and theoretically investigate the scattering of a photonic quantum field from another stored in a strongly interacting atomic Rydberg ensemble. Considering the many-body limit of this problem, we derive an exact solution to the scattering-induced spatial decoherence of multiple stored photons, allowing for a rigorous understanding of the underlying dissipative quantum dynamics. Combined with our experiments, this analysis reveals a correlated coherence-protection process in which the scattering from one excitation can shield all others from spatial decoherence. We discuss how this effect can be used to manipulate light at the quantum level, providing a robust mechanism for single-photon subtraction, and experimentally demonstrate this capability.
@article{arxiv.1710.10047,
title = {Photon Subtraction by Many-Body Decoherence},
author = {Callum R. Murray and Ivan Mirgorodskiy and Christoph Tresp and Christoph Braun and Asaf Paris-Mandoki and Alexey V. Gorshkov and Sebastian Hofferberth and Thomas Pohl},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.10047},
year = {2018}
}