2008/08/31 by Magdalena Stobińska, Gernot Alber, Gerd Leuchs · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1209/0295-5075/86/14007
published as Europhys. Lett. 86, 14007 (2009) · 4 pages, 2 figures
arxiv created 2009/01/13 · arxiv updated 2010/05/04
We propose a scheme for perfect excitation of a single two-level atom by a single photon in free space. The photon state has to match the time reversed photon state originating from spontaneous decay of a two-level system. We discuss its experimental preparation. The state is characterized by a particular asymmetric exponentially-shaped temporal profile. Any deviations from this ideal state limit the maximum absorption. Although perfect excitation requires an infinite amount of time we demonstrate that there is a class of initial one-photon quantum states which can achieve almost perfect absorption even for a finite interaction time. Our results pave the way for realizing perfect coupling between flying and stationary qubits in free space thus opening a possibility for building scalable quantum networks.