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Few-photon all-optical phase rotation in a quantum-well micropillar cavity

Nature Photonics volume 16, pages 566–569 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Photonic platforms are an excellent setting for quantum technologies as weak photon–environment coupling ensures long coherence times. The second key ingredient for quantum photonics is interactions between photons, which can be provided by optical nonlinearities in the form of cross-phase modulation. This approach underpins many proposed applications in quantum optics1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and information processing8, but achieving its potential requires strong single-photon-level nonlinear phase shifts as well as scalable nonlinear elements. In this work we show that the required nonlinearity can be provided by exciton–polaritons in micropillars with embedded quantum wells. These combine the strong interactions of excitons9,10 with the scalability of micrometre-sized emitters11. We observe cross-phase modulation of up to 3 ± 1 mrad per polariton using laser beams attenuated to below the average intensity of a single photon. With our work serving as a stepping stone, we lay down a route for quantum information processing in polaritonic lattices.

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Fig. 1: Sample properties.
Fig. 2: Measured phase shift as a function of control beam mean polariton number.
Fig. 3: Phase shift dependence on control beam polarization.

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Data availability

The data supporting the findings of this study are freely available in the University of Sheffield repository with the identifier https://doi.org/10.15131/shef.data.14744121.

Code availability

The custom codes used in this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council grants EP/N031776/1 and EP/V026496/1, the QUANTERA project Interpol (EP/R04385X/1 and ANR-QUAN-0003-05), the Paris Ile-de-France Région in the framework of DIM SIRTEQ, ERC StG ARQADIA (949730) and CoG EMERGENTOPO (865151), the Marie Skłodowska-Curie individual fellowship ToPol, the H2020-FETFLAG project PhoQus (820392) and the French RENATECH network. O.K. acknowledges the support from UK EPSRC New Investigator Award (EP/V00171X/1). A.A. acknowledges support from the Labex CEMPI (ANR-11-LABX-0007). I.A.S. acknowledges support from IRF (project ‘Hybrid polaritonics’) and Priority 2030 Federal Academic Leadership Program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Tintu Kuriakose, Paul M. Walker, Toby Dowling, Maurice S. Skolnick & Dmitry N. Krizhanovskii

  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

    Oleksandr Kyriienko

  3. Science Institute, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland

    Ivan A. Shelykh

  4. Department of Physics and Technology, ITMO University, St Petersburg, Russia

    Ivan A. Shelykh

  5. Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies (C2N), Université Paris Saclay—CNRS, Palaiseau, France

    Phillipe St-Jean, Nicola Carlon Zambon, Aristide Lemaître, Isabelle Sagnes, Luc Legratiet, Abdelmounaim Harouri, Sylvain Ravets & Jacqueline Bloch

  6. Univ. Lille, CNRS, UMR 8523 –PhLAM– Physique des Lasers Atomes et Molécules, Lille, France

    Alberto Amo

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Contributions

P.M.W. and D.N.K. conceived and designed the experiment. T.K., P.M.W. and T.D. built the experimental apparatus and performed the experiments. P.S-J, N.C.Z., A.A., S.R. and J.B. designed and characterized the sample. A.L, IS, L.L and A.H fabricated the sample. P.M.W. analysed the data, and wrote the manuscript and Supplementary Information with contributions from T.K. and O.K. O K. developed the quantum theoretical description of XPM CPHASE gates. P.M.W. developed the classical theory for cavity occupancy and XPM polariton polarization rotation. All authors contributed to discussion of the data, and discussion and revision of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Paul M. Walker.

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Nature Photonics thanks Fetah Benabid and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Discussion 1–10 and Figs. 1–10.

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Kuriakose, T., Walker, P.M., Dowling, T. et al. Few-photon all-optical phase rotation in a quantum-well micropillar cavity. Nat. Photon. 16, 566–569 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-022-01019-6

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