Wen-Ju Gu

Deterministic generation and manipulation of nonclassical light are the central goals of quantum photonics. Waveguide quantum electrodynamics with atomic arrays enable strong photon–photon interactions via collective effects. Recently, giant atoms with multiple coupling points have opened new avenues for engineering photon correlations. In particular, the braided configuration offers unique features; however, most studies on quantum nonlinearity are limited to two atoms. Here, we extend the investigation to arrays of more braided giant atoms and uncover two distinct regimes controlled by phase parameters. One regime corresponds to Lorentzian resonances in the single-excitation subspace, where the system behaves as an effective two-level model at resonance, producing bunched transmitted light and antibunched reflected light. The two-excitation nonlinearity is weaker and tends to bunch photons, and at triple resonance the system loses tunability. The second regime corresponds to the Fano resonance arising from the spectral coalescence of the collective modes. In this regime, we achieve near-unity transmission with strong photon antibunching in transmission, and significant photon bunching in reflection. Our results establish braided giant-atom arrays as a scalable, cavity-free platform for engineering nonclassical photon correlations.

We investigate one- and two-photon scattering in a one-dimensional waveguide coupled to a giant atom within the non-Markovian regime using the resolvent approach. The non-Markovian behavior gives rise to an atom-photon bound state that cannot be excited by a single incident photon. However, the bound state can be excited via the two-photon scattering process described by multichannel scattering theory, from which an analytical trapping probability of a photon in the bound state can be achieved. Additionally, we analyze the two-photon scattering process, obtaining the analytical expressions for scattered states. As non-Markovian effects strengthen, two peaks appear in the incoherent power spectrum, attributed to the system behaving as a leaky cavity formed by the giant atom's coupling points. Through the analysis of second-order correlation functions, we observe the bunching behavior for transmitted photons, antibunching behavior for reflected photons, and the distinctive retrieval behavior at the coupling points' separation.

We investigate the scattering processes of two photons in a one-dimensional waveguide coupled to two giant atoms. By adjusting the accumulated phase shifts between the coupling points, we are able to effectively manipulate the characteristics of these scattering photons. Utilizing the Lippmann-Schwinger formalism, we derive analytical expressions for the wave functions describing two-photon interaction in separate, braided, and nested configurations. Based on these wave functions, we also obtain analytical expressions for the incoherent power spectra and second-order correlation functions. In contrast to small atoms, the incoherent spectrum, which is defined by the correlation of the bound state, can exhibit more tunability due to the phase shifts. Additionally, the second-order correlation functions in the transmission and reflection fields could be tuned to exhibit either bunching or antibunching upon resonant driving. These unique features offered by the giant atoms in waveguide QED could benefit the generation of nonclassical itinerant photons in quantum networks.

We investigate the scattering processes of two photons in a one-dimensional waveguide coupled to two giant atoms. By adjusting the accumulated phase shifts between the coupling points, we are able to effectively manipulate the characteristics of these scattering photons. Utilizing the Lippmann-Schwinger formalism, we derive analytical expressions for the wave functions describing two-photon interaction in separate, braided, and nested configurations. Based on these wave functions, we also obtain analytical expressions for the incoherent power spectra and second-order correlation functions. In contrast to small atoms, the incoherent spectrum, which is defined by the correlation of the bound state, can exhibit more tunability due to the phase shifts. Additionally, the second-order correlation functions in the transmission and reflection fields could be tuned to exhibit either bunching or antibunching upon resonant driving. These unique features offered by the giant atoms in waveguide QED could benefit the generation of nonclassical itinerant photons in quantum networks.

We study the two-photon scattering processes in a one-dimensional waveguide coupled to a two- or three-level giant atom, respectively. The accumulated phase shift between the two coupling points can be utilized to alter the scattering processes. We obtain the exact interacting two-photon scattering wavefunction of these two systems following the Lippmann-Schwinger formalism, from which the analytical expressions of incoherent power spectra and second-order correlations are also derived. The incoherent spectrum, defined by the correlation of the bound state, serves as a useful indication of photon-photon correlation. The second-order correlation function gives a direct measure of photon-photon correlation. For photons scattered by the two-level giant atom, the accumulated phase shift can be used to improve photon-photon correlation,and adjust the evolution of the second-order correlation. In the system of the three-level giant atom, the photon-photon correlation can be substantially increased. Moreover, the photon-photon interactions and correlation distance of scattered photons can be further enhanced by tuning the accumulated phase shift.

We investigate the two-photon scattering processes in a one-dimensional waveguide coupled to either a two-level or three-level giant atom. By manipulating the accumulated phase shift between the two coupling points, we are able to effectively modify the characteristics of these scattering processes. Utilizing the Lippmann-Schwinger formalism, we obtain the exact two-photon interacting scattering wave functions of these two systems. Additionally, analytical expressions for the incoherent power spectra and second-order correlations are derived. The incoherent spectrum, which is defined by the correlation of the bound state, provides valuable insights into photon-photon correlations. It serves as a useful indicator of the degree of photon-photon correlation between scattered photons. Furthermore, the second-order correlation function gives a direct measure of the photon-photon correlation. For photons scattered by the two-level giant atom, manipulating the accumulated phase shift allows for improvement of the photon-photon correlation and adjustment of the evolution of the second-order correlation. In the case of the three-level giant atom, the photon-photon correlation can be substantially increased. The photon-photon interaction and correlation distance of the scattered photons can be further enhanced by tuning the accumulated phase shift. Moreover, the statistical properties can be adjusted by the control field.

Correlated two‐photon scattering in a waveguide quantum electrodynamics system consisting of a four‐level ‐type emitter (4LE) sidely coupled to a one‐dimensional (1D) waveguide is studied. In the two‐photon regime, scattering eigenstates of the system are constructed by imposing an open boundary condition and defining the incident state as a free plane wave, which includes a photon–photon bound state that passes through the 4LE as a composite single particle. In the multilevel system, the bound state can be tuned by the interference to generate controllable types of interactions (attractive or repulsive) and interaction strengths. Photon‐induced tunneling (bunching) in transmission and photon blockade (antibunching) in reflection are found in the system. In addition, the scattering photon pair off the system is strongly entangled in momentum space.

A coherent feedback scheme is used to enhance the degree of squeezing of the output field in a cavity optomechanical system. In the feedback loop, a beam splitter (BS) plays the roles of both a feedback controller and an input–output port. To realize effective enhancement, the output quadrature should take the same form as the input quadrature, and the system should operate at the deamplification situation in the meantime. This can be realized by choosing an appropriate frequency-dependent phase angle for the generalized quadrature. Additionally, both the transmissivity of the BS and the phase factor induced by time delays in the loop affect optical squeezing. For the fixed frequency, the optimal values of transmissivity and phase factor can be used to achieve the enhanced optical squeezing. The effect of optical losses on squeezing is also discussed. Optical squeezing is degraded by the introduced vacuum noise owing to the inefficient transmission in the loop. We show that the enhancement of squeezing is achievable with the parameters of the current experiments.

We investigate the generation of nonreciprocal single photons in the chiral waveguide-cavity-emitter system. Due to the chirality of light-emitter interactions, photons in the left direction couple to a cavity which induces only linear optical effects, while photons in the right direction couple to a cavity-emitter system which can generate optical nonlinearity. In the regime of single-photon transmission, photons in the left direction are absorbed by the cavity at the resonance frequency, while photons in the right direction are transmitted due to the Rabi splitting. In the regime of two-photon transmission, optical linearity in the left direction cannot produce photon-photon interactions and does not change the statistics of photons. However, the effective repulsive interaction between photons can be produced by the optical nonlinearity in the right direction, suppressing two-photon transmission (photon blockade). Physically, the photon-photon bound state, which emerges due to the strong-photon-photon correlation mediated by the cavity-emitter system, plays a key role in generation of photon blockade at the resonance frequency. As a result, nonreciprocal single photons can be realized in the combination of single-photon transmission and photon blockade at the resonance frequency. Additionally, photon-photon interactions are sensitive to the width of the wave packet since photons should coincide at the interaction site.