Single-photon bound states in atomic ensembles

ORAL

Abstract


We illustrate the existence of single-excitation bound states for propagating photons interacting with N two-level atoms. These bound states can be calculated from an effective spin model, and their existence relies on dissipation in the system. The appearance of these bound states is in a one-to-one correspondence with zeros in the single-photon transmission and with divergent bunching in the second-order photon-photon correlation function. We also formulate a dissipative version of Levinson’s theorem for this system by looking at the relation between the number of bound states and the winding number of the transmission phases. This theorem allows a direct experimental measurement of the number of bound states using the measured transmission phases.

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Presenters

  • Yidan Wang

    • Joint Quantum Institute
    • Joint Quantum Institute, University of Maryland
    • JQI-NIST

Authors

  • Yidan Wang

    • Joint Quantum Institute
    • Joint Quantum Institute, University of Maryland
    • JQI-NIST

  • Michael Gullans

    • Princeton University
    • Department of Physics, Princeton University
    • Physics, Princeton University

  • Antoine Browaeys

    • Laboratoire Charles Fabry, Institut d’Optique Graduate School, CNRS, Universite Paris-Saclay
    • Institut d’Optique

  • James V Porto

    • Joint Quantum Institute

  • Darrick Chang

    • Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques
    • ICFO

  • Alexey V Gorshkov

    • Join Quantum Institute
    • Joint Quantum Institute
    • Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science
    • QuICS/JQI, University of Maryland, College Park
    • University of Maryland, College Park
    • Joint Quantum Institute and Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science, NIST/University of Maryland
    • JQI/QuICS NIST/University of Maryland, College Park