Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Blegdamsvej 17, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark.
Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology, Atominstitut, TU Wien, Stadionallee 2, 1020 Vienna, Austria.
Nature. 2017 Jan 25;541(7638):473-480. doi: 10.1038/nature21037.
Advanced photonic nanostructures are currently revolutionizing the optics and photonics that underpin applications ranging from light technology to quantum-information processing. The strong light confinement in these structures can lock the local polarization of the light to its propagation direction, leading to propagation-direction-dependent emission, scattering and absorption of photons by quantum emitters. The possibility of such a propagation-direction-dependent, or chiral, light-matter interaction is not accounted for in standard quantum optics and its recent discovery brought about the research field of chiral quantum optics. The latter offers fundamentally new functionalities and applications: it enables the assembly of non-reciprocal single-photon devices that can be operated in a quantum superposition of two or more of their operational states and the realization of deterministic spin-photon interfaces. Moreover, engineered directional photonic reservoirs could lead to the development of complex quantum networks that, for example, could simulate novel classes of quantum many-body systems.
先进的光子纳米结构正在彻底改变光学和光子学，这些技术为从光技术到量子信息处理等应用提供了支持。在这些结构中，强光限制可以将光的局部偏振锁定到其传播方向，从而导致量子发射器对光子的传播方向相关的发射、散射和吸收。这种传播方向相关的，或手性的，光物质相互作用的可能性在标准量子光学中没有得到考虑，而其最近的发现催生了手性量子光学这一研究领域。后者提供了全新的功能和应用：它使非互易单光子器件的组装成为可能，这些器件可以在其两个或更多操作状态的量子叠加中运行，并实现确定性的自旋光子接口。此外，设计的定向光子储库可以导致复杂的量子网络的发展，例如，可以模拟新型的量子多体系统。
