Crystallization of strongly interacting photons in a nonlinear optical fibre
Crystallization of strongly interacting photons in a nonlinear optical fibre
复制标题
DOI：
10.1038/nphys1074
复制
发表时间：
2008-11-01
期刊：
影响因子：
19.6
通讯作者：
Demler, E. A.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Chang, D. E.;Gritsev, V.;Demler, E. A.
理解强关联量子系统是物理学许多领域的核心问题。相互作用粒子的集体行为引起了各种基本现象，如量子色动力学中的限制，量子霍尔制度中的电子分馏以及非常规超导体和量子磁体中的相变。这样的系统通常涉及大量的粒子，但光学光子也可以在非线性介质中相互作用。然而，在实践中，这种相互作用往往非常微弱。在这里，我们描述了一种技术，使创建一个强相关的量子气体的光子使用一维光学系统与紧场限制和相干光子捕获技术。这种限制使得能够通过光子与附近的冷原子气体的相互作用产生大的、可调谐的光学非线性。在极端情况下，我们证明了量子光场可以在这样的一维介质中进行费米子化，这可以通过标准光子相关测量来探测。
Understanding strongly correlated quantum systems is a central problem in many areas of physics. The collective behaviour of interacting particles gives rise to diverse fundamental phenomena such as confinement in quantum chromodynamics, electron fractionalization in the quantum Hall regime and phase transitions in unconventional superconductors and quantum magnets. Such systems typically involve massive particles, but optical photons can also interact with one another in a nonlinear medium. In practice, however, such interactions are often very weak. Here we describe a technique that enables the creation of a strongly correlated quantum gas of photons using one-dimensional optical systems with tight field confinement and coherent photon trapping techniques. The confinement enables the generation of large, tunable optical nonlinearities via the interaction of photons with a nearby cold atomic gas. In its extreme, we show that a quantum light field can undergo fermionization in such one-dimensional media, which can be probed via standard photon correlation measurements.