Seminario de Física - Miércoles 18 de Abril - 3:30 PM

Although organic chromophores are known for having large nonlinear optical susceptibilities, their use in quantum nonlinear optics with single-photon resolution is still beyond experimental reach. To overcome this limitation, we propose a cavity QED scheme to enable cross-phase modulation between two arbitrarily weak classical fields in the optical domain, using organic molecular photoswitches as a disordered intracavity nonlinear medium.  

In this talk, we discuss the possibility of exploiting a long-lived vibrational Raman coherence between cis and trans isomer states of the molecular photoswitch to establish vacuum-induced transparency (VIT), a well-known phenomenon in atomic physics that remains to be observed in solid state systems. We develop an analytical approximation to describe the photophysics of the system under conditions of VIT, and use it to demonstrate that our target cross-phase modulation signal can surpass the detection limit imposed by absorption losses, even in the presence of strong natural energetic and orientational disorder in the medium. Possible applications of the scheme include the development of organic nanophotonic devices for all-optical switching with low photon numbers.