Impossibility of large phase shifts via the giant Kerr effect with single-photon wave packets

• Published in: Physical review. A, Atomic, molecular, and optical physics Atomic, molecular, and optical physics, 2010-04, Vol.81 (4), Article 043823
• Main Author: Gea-Banacloche, Julio
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: ABSORPTION; ANALYTICAL SOLUTION; APPROXIMATIONS; ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS; ATOMS; BOSONS; CALCULATION METHODS; CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS; DIELECTRIC PROPERTIES; ELECTRICAL PROPERTIES; ELEMENTARY PARTICLES; HAMILTONIANS; KERR EFFECT; MASSLESS PARTICLES; MATHEMATICAL OPERATORS; MATHEMATICAL SOLUTIONS; MODULATION; OPACITY; OPTICAL PROPERTIES; PHASE SHIFT; PHOTONS; PHYSICAL PROPERTIES; PROBABILITY; PULSES; QUANTUM OPERATORS; SCHROEDINGER PICTURE; SORPTION; UNITARITY; WAVE PACKETS
• ISSN: 1050-2947; 1094-1622
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.81.043823

An approximate analytical solution is presented, along with numerical calculations, for a system of two single-photon wave packets interacting via an ideal, localized Kerr medium. It is shown that, because of spontaneous emission into the initially unoccupied temporal modes, the cross-phase-modulation in the Schroedinger picture is very small as long as the spectral width of the single-photon pulses is well within the medium's bandwidth. In this limit, the Hamiltonian used can be derived from the 'giant Kerr effect' for a four-level atom, under conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency; it is shown explicitly that the linear absorption in this system increases as the pulse's spectral width approaches the medium's transparency bandwidth, and hence, as long as the absorption probability remains small, the maximum cross-phase-modulation is limited to essentially useless values. These results are in agreement with the general, causality-based, and unitarity-based arguments of Shapiro and Razavi [J. H. Shapiro, Phys. Rev. A 73, 062305 (2006); J. H. Shapiro and M. Razavi, New J. Phys. 9, 16 (2007)].