NER: Nanofabricated Optical Devices Based On Single Photon Tunneling

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This proposal was received in response to Nanoscale Science and Engineering initiative, NSF 01-157, category NER. Strong evidence of a single-photon tunneling effect, a direct analog of single-electron tunneling, has been obtained recently in our measurements of light tunneling through individual subwavelength pinholes in a thick gold film covered with a layer of polydiacetylene. The transmission of some pinholes reached saturation because of the optical nonlinearity of polydiacetylene at a very low light intensity of a few thousands photons per second. This result has been explained theoretically in terms of "photon blockade", similar to the Coulomb blockade phenomenon observed in single-electron tunneling experiments. The single-photon tunneling effect may find many applications in the emerging fields of quantum communication and information processing. The experiments reported so far have been performed for random pinholes that are naturally present in thin metal films. There is no detailed knowledge on the shape and size of the pinholes necessary to produce this effect under controlled conditions, which severely limits advancement of the theoretical description of the effect and its possible applications. We propose to expand these experiments to study single-photon tunneling effect in well-controlled geometries, by making use of ion-beam milling fabrication techniques. Based on this research we are going to explore a number of novel device ideas in the areas of optical communications and quantum optics.