State measurement of a quantum harmonic oscillator is essential in quantum optics and quantum information processing. In a system of trapped ions, we experimentally demonstrate the projective measurement of the state of the ions motional mode via an effective cross-Kerr coupling to another motional mode. This coupling is induced by the intrinsic nonlinearity of the Coulomb interaction between the ions. We spectroscopically resolve the frequency shift of the motional sideband of the first mode due to presence of single phonons in the second mode and use it to reconstruct the phonon number distribution of the second mode.
We show, in the context of single photon detection, that an atomic three-level model for a transmon in a transmission line does not support the predictions of the nonlinear polarisability model known as the cross-Kerr effect. We show that the induced displacement of a probe in the presence or absence of a single photon in the signal field, cannot be resolved above the quantum noise in the probe. This strongly suggests that cross-Kerr media are not suitable for photon counting or related single photon applications. Our results are presented in the context of a transmon in a one dimensional microwave waveguide, but the conclusions also apply to optical systems.
Few-photon optomechanical effects are not only important physical evidences for understanding the radiation-pressure interaction between photons and mechanical oscillation, but also have wide potential applications in modern quantum technology. Here we study the few-photon optomechanical effects including photon blockade and generation of the Schr{o}dinger cat states under the assistance of a cross-Kerr interaction, which is an inherent interaction accompanied the optomechanical coupling in a generalized optomechanical system. By exactly diagonalizing the generalized optomechanical Hamiltonian and calculating its unitary evolution operator, we find the physical mechanism of the enhancement of photon blockade and single-photon mechanical displacement. The quantum properties in this generalized optomechanical system are studied by investigating the second-order correlation function of the cavity field and calculating the Wigner function and the probability distribution of the rotated quadrature operator for the mechanical mode. We also study the influence of the dissipations on the few-photon optomechanical effects.
Logic-qubit entanglement has attracted much attention in both quantum communication and quantum computation. Here, we present an efficient protocol to distill the logic-qubit entanglement with the help of cross-Kerr nonlinearity. This protocol not only can purify the logic bit-flip error and logic phase-flip error, but also can correct the physical bit-flip error completely. We use cross-Kerr nonlinearity to construct quantum nondemolition detectors. Our distillation protocol for logic-qubit entanglement may be useful for the practical applications in quantum information, especially in long-distance quantum communication.
We study the entanglement generated by a weak cross-Kerr nonlinearity between two initial coherent states, one of which has an amplitude close to the single-photon level, while the other one is macroscopic. We show that strong micro-macro entanglement is possible for weak phase shifts by choosing the amplitude of the macroscopic beam sufficiently large. We analyze the effects of loss and discuss possible experimental demonstrations of the micro-macro entanglement based on homodyne tomography and on a new entanglement witness.
We investigate the spatio-temporal evolution of a Gaussian probe pulse propagating through a four-level $N$-type atomic medium. At two-photon resonance of probe-and control fields, weaker probe pulses may propagate through the medium with low absorption and pulse shape distortion. In contrast, we find that increasing the probe pulse intensity leads to a splitting of the initially Gaussian pulse into a sequence of subpulses in the time domain. The number of subpulses arising throughout the propagation can be controlled via a suitable choice of the probe and control field parameters. Employing a simple theoretical model for the nonlinear pulse propagation, we conclude that the splitting occurs due to an interplay of Kerr nonlinearity and group velocity dispersion.