TY - JOUR T1 - Photon Subtraction by Many-Body Decoherence Y1 - 2018 A1 - Callum R. Murray A1 - Ivan Mirgorodskiy A1 - Christoph Tresp A1 - Christoph Braun A1 - Asaf Paris-Mandoki A1 - Alexey V. Gorshkov A1 - Sebastian Hofferberth A1 - Thomas Pohl AB -

We present an experimental and theoretical investigation of the scattering-induced decoherence of multiple photons stored in a strongly interacting atomic ensemble. We derive an exact solution to this many-body problem, allowing for a rigorous understanding of the underlying dissipative quantum dynamics. Combined with our experiments, this analysis demonstrates a correlated coherence-protection process, in which the induced decoherence of one photon can preserve the spatial coherence of all others. We discuss how this effect can be used to manipulate light at the quantum level, providing a robust mechanism for single-photon subtraction, and experimentally demonstrate this capability.

UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.10047 U5 - https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.113601 ER -