Photon-phonon entanglement and frequency upconversion with molecular oscillators

ORAL  · Invited

Abstract

I will show that molecular vibrations, with oscillation frequencies in the tens of THz, can sustain quantum effects such as superposition and entanglement at room temperature. I will also present a new application of molecular oscillators for frequency upconversion from mid-infrared to visible light. Molecules are embedded inside a dual-resonant plasmonic nanocavity offering deep-sub-wavelength light confinement both at mid-infrared to visible frequencies and resulting in about 13 orders of magnitude enhancement in upconversion efficiency compared to the same molecules in free space. This work demonstrates the untapped potential of molecular cavity optomechanics for coherent signal transduction.

*This work received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant Agreement No. 829067 (FET Open THOR) and Grant Agreement No. 820196 (ERC CoG QTONE), and from the Swiss National Science Foundation (project numbers 170684 and 198898).

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Publication: [1] W. Chen, P. Roelli, H. Hu, S. Verlekar, S. Priya Amirtharaj, A. I. Barreda, T. J. Kippenberg, M. Kovylina, E. Verhagen, A. Mart nez, and C. Galland. Continuous-Wave Frequency Upconversion with a Molecular Optomechanical Nanocavity. Science (in print), arXiv:2107.03033, 2021.

[2] S. Tarrago Velez, V. Sudhir, N. Sangouard, and C. Galland. Bell Correlation Between Light and Vibrations. Science Advances, 6(51):abb0260, 2021, doi:10.1126/sciadv.abb0260.

[3] S. Tarrago Velez, K. Seibold, N. Kipfer, M. D. Anderson, V. Sudhir, and C. Galland. Preparation and Decay of a Single Quantum of Vibration at Ambient Conditions. Physical Review X, 9:041007, 2019, doi:10.1103/PhysRevX.9.041007.

[4] M. D. Anderson, S. Tarrago Velez, K. Seibold, H. Flayac, V. Savona, N. Sangouard, and C. Galland. Two-Color Pump-Probe Measurement of Photonic Quantum Correlations Mediated by a Single Phonon. Physical Review Letters, 120(23):233601, 2018, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.233601.

[5] P. Roelli, D. Martin-Cano, T. J. Kippenberg, and C. Galland. Molecular platform for frequency upconversion at the single-photon level. Physical Review X, 10(3):031057, 2020, doi:10.1103/PhysRevX.10.031057.

Presenters

  • Christophe Galland

    • Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL)
    • Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

Authors

  • Christophe Galland

    • Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL)
    • Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne