Related papers: Demonstration of the Interaction between Two Stopp…
Electromagnetically induced transparency in an optically thick, cold medium creates a unique system where pulse-propagation velocities may be orders of magnitude less than $c$ and optical nonlinearities become exceedingly large. As a…
Over the past years, there have been many efforts towards generating interactions between two optical beams so strong that they could be observed at the level of individual photons. Such strong interactions, beyond opening up a new regime…
We experimentally demonstrate that both a converted and an unconverted light pulses after wavelength conversion with various conversion efficiencies preserve phase information of an input light at a single-photon level. In our experiment,…
Photons are excellent information carriers but normally pass through each other without consequence. Engineered interactions between photons would enable applications from quantum information processing to simulation of condensed matter…
We demonstrate a fiber-optical switch that is activated at tiny energies corresponding to few hundred optical photons per pulse. This is achieved by simultaneously confining both photons and a small laser-cooled ensemble of atoms inside the…
We show that the recently demonstrated technique for generating stationary pulses of light [Nature {\bf 426}, 638 (2003)] can be extended to localize optical pulses in all three spatial dimensions in a resonant atomic medium. This method…
New technologies providing tight focusing lens and mirrors with large numerical apertures and electro-optic modulation of single photons are now available for the investigation of photon-atom interactions without a cavity. From the…
We report an experimental demonstration of single-photon switching in laser-cooled $^{87}$Rb atoms. A resonant probe pulse with an energy per unit area of one photon per $\lambda^2/2\pi$ propagates through the optically thick atoms. Its…
We investigate the nonlinear interaction between two photons in a single input pulse at an atomic two level nonlinearity. A one dimensional model for the propagation of light to and from the atom is used to describe the precise…
Photon-photon interactions are an essential requirement of quantum photonic information processing. One way to generate these interactions is to utilize an atom strongly coupled to an optical cavity. This system exhibits the photon blockade…
Efficient photon-photon interaction is one of the key elements for realizing quantum information processing. The interaction, however, must often be mediated through an atomic medium due to the bosonic nature of photons, and the interaction…
Harnessing nonlinearities strong enough to allow two single photons to interact with one another is not only a fascinating challenge but is central to numerous advanced applications in quantum information science. Currently, all known…
The long-range interaction between Rydberg-excited atoms endows a medium with large optical nonlinearity. Here, we demonstrate an optical switch to operate on a single photon from an entangled photon pair under a Rydberg electromagnetically…
We study the propagation of light pulses in an absorbing medium when the frequency of their carrier coincides with a zero of the refractive index dispersion. Although slow light and, a fortiori, fast light are not expected in such…
Physical processes that could facilitate coherent control of light propagation are now actively explored. In addition to fundamental interest, these efforts are stimulated by possibilities to develop, for example, a quantum memory for…
The interaction between light and matter is fundamental to developments in quantum optics and information. Over recent years enormous progress has been made in controlling the interface between light and single emitters including ions,…
The controlled interaction between a single, trapped, laser-driven atom and the mode of a high-finesse optical cavity allows for the generation of temporally separated, entangled light pulses. Entanglement between the photon-number…
Single-photon coherent optics represents a fundamental importance for the investigation of quantum light-matter interactions. While most work has considered the interaction in the steady-state regime, here we demonstrate that a…
The absorption of a single photon that excites a quantum system from a low to a high energy level is an elementary process of light-matter interaction, and a route towards realizing pure single-photon absorption has both fundamental and…
When two-photon interactions are induced by down-converted light with a bandwidth that exceeds the pump bandwidth, they can obtain a behavior that is pulse-like temporally, yet spectrally narrow. At low photon fluxes this behavior reflects…