Abstract
While artificially fabricated patterned metasurfaces are providing paradigm-shifting optical components for classical light manipulation, strongly interacting, controllable, and deterministic quantum interfaces between light and matter in free space remain an outstanding challenge. Here we theoretically demonstrate how to achieve quantum control of both the electric and magnetic components of an incident single-photon pulse by engineering the collective response of a two-dimensional atomic array. High-fidelity absorption and storage in a long-lived subradiant state, and its subsequent retrieval, are achieved by controlling classically or quantum mechanically the ac Stark shifts of the atomic levels and suppressing the scattering during the absorption. Quantum wavefront control of the transmitted photon with nearly zero reflection is prepared by coupling the collective state of the array to another photon in a cavity and by engineering a Huygens' surface of atoms using only a single coherent standing wave. The proposed schemes allow for the generation of entanglement between the cavity, the lattice, and hence the state of the stored, reflected or transmitted light, and for quantum-state transfer between the cavity and propagating photons. Bipartite entanglement generation is explicitly calculated between a stored single-photon excitation of the array and the cavity photon. We illustrate the control by manipulating the phase, phase superposition, polarization, and direction of a transmitted or reflected photon, providing quantum-optical switches and functional quantum interfaces between light and atoms that could form links in a larger quantum information platform.
Highlights
Modular quantum networks require versatile quantum systems to act as individual nodes, as well as coherent links to transfer information between them [1,2,3]
Collimated light emission allows for the arrays to be efficiently linked in free space [19,20,21] and even to form single-photon quantum antennas [20,22]
We show how cooperative responses in planar arrays of atoms can be harnessed for achieving optical manipulation that is reminiscent of artificially fabricated metasurfaces but with single-photon quantum control based on atomic physics technology
Summary
Modular quantum networks require versatile quantum systems to act as individual nodes, as well as coherent links to transfer information between them [1,2,3]. Examples include the deterministic absorption and storage of a single-photon pulse as a subradiant excitation and the manipulation of the phase, polarization, and direction of a reflected or transmitted photon We demonstrate how this engineering can be achieved via an interacting qubit, such as a cavity photon, generating entanglement and enabling quantum-state transfer between the cavity and outgoing photons. Extreme wave-front control of a transmitted photon with a quantum-coherent entanglement-preserving protocol can be achieved with an interacting qubit tuning the resonance of an atomic Huygens’ surface This takes the ideas of metasurfaces to the realm of quantum nanophotonics by demonstrating a birefringent variable wave plate, photon steering, and quantum-optical switch of the phase of a reflected photon from the atoms that simultaneously act as an ultrathin flat electric and magnetic mirror. Our scheme allows for single-photon quantum control as part of a larger quantum architecture, with the state of the cavity depending on prior operations, and the photons stored, sorted, and redirected into outgoing modes in a way that preserves entanglement
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