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Experimental demonstration of switching entangled photons based on the Rydberg blockade effect

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Abstract

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 induced transparency configuration. With the presence of the Rydberg blockade effect, we switch on a gate field to make the atomic medium nontransparent thereby absorbing the single photon emitted from another atomic ensemble via the spontaneous four-wave mixing process. In contrast to the case without a gate field, more than 50% of the photons sent to the switch are blocked, and finally achieve an effective single-photon switch. There are on average 1–2 gate photons per effective blockade sphere in one gate pulse. This switching effect on a single entangled photon depends on the principal quantum number and the photon number of the gate field. Our experimental progress is significant in the quantum information process especially in controlling the interaction between Rydberg atoms and entangled photon pairs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Quantum Information, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Yi-Chen Yu, Ming-Xin Dong, Ying-Hao Ye, Guang-Can Guo, Dong-Sheng Ding & Bao-Sen Shi

  2. Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Yi-Chen Yu, Ming-Xin Dong, Ying-Hao Ye, Guang-Can Guo, Dong-Sheng Ding & Bao-Sen Shi

Authors
  1. Yi-Chen Yu
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  2. Ming-Xin Dong
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  3. Ying-Hao Ye
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  4. Guang-Can Guo
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  5. Dong-Sheng Ding
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  6. Bao-Sen Shi
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Dong-Sheng Ding or Bao-Sen Shi.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFA0304800), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61525504, 61722510, 61435011, 11174271, 61275115, and 11604322), the Anhui Initiative in Quantum Information Technologies (Grant No. AHY020200), and the Youth Innovation Pro motion Association of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. 2018490). The authors thank Prof. Lin Li from Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Prof. Yuan Sun from National University of Defense Technology for valued discussions and critical reading our manuscript.

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The supporting information is available online at phys.scichina.com and link.springer.com. The supporting materials are published as submitted, without typesetting or editing. The responsibility for scientific accuracy and content remains entirely with the authors.

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Supporting information of Experimental demonstration of switching entangled photons based on the Rydberg blockade effect

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Yu, YC., Dong, MX., Ye, YH. et al. Experimental demonstration of switching entangled photons based on the Rydberg blockade effect. Sci. China Phys. Mech. Astron. 63, 110312 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-020-1602-1

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