Physicists observe novel quantum effect that limits the number of emitted photons
The probability to find a certain number of photons inside a laser pulse usually corresponds to a classical distribution of independent events, the so-called Poisson-distribution. There are, however, light sources with non-classical photon number distributions that can only be described by the laws of quantum mechanics. A well-known example is the single-photon source that may find application in quantum cryptography for secret key distribution or in quantum networks for connecting quantum memories and processors. However, for many applications in nonlinear quantum optics light pulses with a certain fixed number of photons, e.g. two, three or four, are highly desirable. A team of scientists from the Quantum Dynamics Division of Professor Gerhard Rempe at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (Garching near Munich) has now succeeded to make the first steps in this direction. Using a strongly coupled atom-cavity system, they were the first to observe the so-called two-photon blockade:...