2014/05/05 by Itay Shomroni, Serge Rosenblum, Yulia Lovsky +3
Computer Science · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Photonic and Optical Devices #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #physics.atom-ph #physics.optics #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/science.1254699
published as Science 345, 903--906 (2014)
arxiv created 2014/05/05 · openalex publication_date 2014/07/11 · arxiv updated 2015/01/08 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
The prospect of quantum networks, in which quantum information is carried by single photons in photonic circuits, has long been the driving force behind the effort to achieve all-optical routing of single photons. We realized a single-photon-activated switch capable of routing a photon from any of its two inputs to any of its two outputs. Our device is based on a single atom coupled to a fiber-coupled, chip-based microresonator. A single reflected control photon toggles the switch from high reflection (R ~ 65%) to high transmission (T ~ 90%), with an average of ~1.5 control photons per switching event (~3, including linear losses). No additional control fields are required. The control and target photons are both in-fiber and practically identical, making this scheme compatible with scalable architectures for quantum information processing.