Creation, Storage, and On-Demand Release of Optical Quantum States with a Negative Wigner Function

Abstract

Highly nonclassical quantum states of light, characterized by Wigner functions with negative values, have been all-optically created so far only in a heralded fashion. In this case, the desired output emerges rarely and randomly from a quantum-state generator. An important example is the heralded production of high-purity single-photon states, typically based on some nonlinear optical interaction. In contrast, on-demand single-photon sources are also reported, exploiting the quantized level structure of matter systems. These sources, however, lead to highly impure output states, composed mostly of vacuum. While such impure states may still exhibit certain single-photon-like features such as antibunching, they are not nonclassical enough for advanced quantum-information processing. On the other hand, the intrinsic randomness of pure, heralded states can be circumvented by first storing and then releasing them on demand. Here, we propose such a controlled release, and we experimentally demonstrate it for heralded single photons. We employ two optical cavities, where the photons are both created and stored inside one cavity and finally released through a dynamical tuning of the other cavity. We demonstrate storage times of up to 300 ns while keeping the single-photon purity around 50% after storage. Our experiment is the first demonstration of a negative Wigner function at the output of an on-demand photon source or a quantum memory. In principle, our storage system is compatible with all kinds of nonclassical states, including those known to be essential for many advanced quantum-information protocols.