title: Cavity-Free Scheme for Nondestructive Detection of a Single Optical Photon.
abstract: Detecting a single photon without absorbing it is a long-standing challenge in quantum optics. All experiments demonstrating the nondestructive detection of a photon make use of a high quality cavity. We present a cavity-free scheme for nondestructive single-photon detection. By pumping a nonlinear medium we implement an interfield Rabi oscillation which leads to a ∼π phase shift on a weak probe coherent laser field in the presence of a single signal photon without destroying the signal photon. Our cavity-free scheme operates with a fast intrinsic time scale in comparison with similar cavity-based schemes. We implement a full real-space multimode numerical analysis of the interacting photonic modes and confirm the validity of our nondestructive scheme in the multimode case.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Engineered Quantum Systems, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia.
authors.forename: Keyu
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.affiliation: Centre for Engineered Quantum Systems, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia.
authors.forename: Mattias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Johnsson
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College, London SW72AZ, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Peter L
authors.initials: PL
authors.lastname: Knight
authors.affiliation: Centre for Engineered Quantum Systems, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia.
authors.forename: Jason
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Twamley