Abstract

Deterministic photon-photon interactions are a long-standing goal in optical science. Using an atomic ensemble inside a cavity, we demonstrate the mutual cross modulation of two continuous light beams at the level of individual photons. The originally uncorrelated beams derived from independent lasers become anticorrelated, as evidenced by an equal-time cross-correlation function g((2)) = 0.89(1), showing that one photon in one beam extinguishes a photon in the other beam with a probability of 11(1)%. With further technical improvements, our approach should enable the nondestructive continuous detection of traveling optical photons.

Publication Details
Publication Type
Journal Article
Year of Publication
2014
Volume
113
DOI
10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.113603
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Contributors
Groups