Enhancement of quantum excitation transport by photonic nonreciprocity

作     者：S. Ali Hassani Gangaraj Lei Ying Francesco Monticone Zongfu Yu 

作者机构：Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison Wisconsin 53706 USA Department of Physics Interdisciplinary Center for Quantum Information State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation and Zhejiang Province Key Laboratory of Quantum Technology and Devices Zhejiang University Hangzhou 310027 China School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Cornell University Ithaca New York 14853 USA 

出 版 物：《Physical Review A》 (Phys. Rev. A)

年 卷 期：2022年第106卷第3期

页      面：033501-033501页

核心收录：

基　　金：National Science Foundation, NSF , (53706) 

主　　题：Photonics Quantum optics Surface plasmons 

摘      要：Enhanced interaction between two two-level emitters (e.g., atoms) by nonreciprocal photonic media can be of benefit to broad areas, from quantum information science to biological detection. Here we provide a detailed analysis on why nonreciprocal photon-mediated interaction enhances interatomic excitation transport efficiency. We investigate a system consisting of two two-level emitters embedded in a generic photonic environment. By comparing symmetric and asymmetric photon exchange, we analytically show that breaking electromagnetic reciprocity makes it possible for the cooperative decay rate to exceed the spontaneous decay rate, even in a translation-invariant homogeneous system. This means that the excitation of an emitter must decay mostly into the other emitter rather than leaking and dissipating into the reservoir photonic modes. We also provide an example where a chain of two-level emitters dominantly interacts via the reciprocal modes of a plasmonic waveguide. We then show that breaking reciprocity in such a system via driving a dc current through the plasmonic material can drastically increase the probability of photon emission from one emitter to another, leading to an order-of-magnitude enhancement in quantum energy-transport efficiency.