English

Coherently driving a single quantum two-level system with dichromatic laser pulses

Quantum Physics 2019-12-17 v1 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Atomic and Molecular Clusters

Abstract

Efficient excitation of a single two-level system usually requires that the driving field is at the same frequency as the atomic transition. However, the scattered laser light in solid-state implementations can dominate over the single photons, imposing an outstanding challenge to perfect single-photon sources. Here, we propose a background-free method using a phase-locked dichromatic electromagnetic field with no spectral overlap with the optical transition for a coherent control of a two-level system, and we demonstrate this method experimentally with a single quantum dot embedded in a micropillar. Single photons generated by pi excitation show a purity of 0.988(1) and indistinguishability of 0.962(6). Further, the phase-coherent nature of the two-color excitation is captured by the resonance-fluorescence intensity dependence on the relative phase between the two pulses. Our two-color excitation method adds a useful toolbox to the study of atom-photon interaction, and the generation of spectrally isolated indistinguishable single photons.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1905.00275,
  title  = {Coherently driving a single quantum two-level system with dichromatic laser pulses},
  author = {Yu-Ming He and Hui Wang and Can Wang and Ming-Cheng Chen and Xing Ding and Jian Qin and Zhao-Chen Duan and Si Chen and Jin-Peng Li and Run-Ze Liu and Christian Schneider and Mete Atature and Sven Hoefling and Chao-Yang Lu and Jian-Wei Pan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1905.00275},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

17 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication (2019)

R2 v1 2026-06-23T08:54:13.552Z