Journal
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS
Volume 123, Issue 23, Pages -Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.233604
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- National Key Research and Development Program of China [2017YFA0304502]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [11634008, 11864018, 11674203, 11574187, 11974223, 11974225]
- Fund for Shanxi 1331 Project Key Subjects Construction
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Optical nonreciprocity is important in photonic information processing to route the optical signal or prevent the reverse flow of noise. By adopting the strong nonlinearity associated with a few atoms in a strongly coupled cavity QED system and an asymmetric cavity configuration, we experimentally demonstrate the nonreciprocal transmission between two counterpropagating light fields with extremely low power. The transmission of 18% is achieved for the forward light field, and the maximum blocking ratio for the reverse light is 30 dB. Though the transmission of the forward light can be maximized by optimizing the impedance matching of the cavity, it is ultimately limited by the inherent loss of the scheme. This nonreciprocity can even occur on a few-photon level due to the high optical nonlinearity of the system. The working power can be flexibly tuned by changing the effective number of atoms strongly coupled to the cavity. The idea and result can be applied to optical chips as optical diodes by using fiber-based cavity QED systems. Our work opens up new perspectives for realizing optical nonreciprocity on a few-photon level based on the nonlinearities of atoms strongly coupled to an optical cavity.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available