Nonlinear optics with less than one photon.
We demonstrate suppression and enhancement of spontaneous parametric down-conversion via quantum interference with two weak fields from a local oscillator (LO). Effectively, pairs of LO photons up-convert with high efficiency for appropriate phase settings, exhibiting an effective nonlinearity enhanced by at least 10 orders of magnitude. This constitutes a two-photon switch and promises to be applicable to a wide variety of quantum nonlinear optical phenomena.
Resch
K J
KJ
Department of Physics, University of Toronto, 60 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A7.
Lundeen
J S
JS
Steinberg
A M
AM