Abstract

Optical nanostructures are promising candidates to explore the limits of light-matter interactions at the quantum regime [1]. As a fingerprint of the granularity of quantum light in such interactions, antibunching has been assessed in the fluorescence of single emitters coupled to nanostructures. In contrast, electromagnetic field fluctuations below shot noise [2], which mirror the nonclassical wave nature of light, are challenging to measure [3] at the single emitter level and have not been measured in these hybrid systems. Such reduced quantum fluctuations are unique characteristics of squeezed states of light [4] which are relevant for overcoming classical application limits in, for instance, precision measurements, spectroscopy, and optical communications. Despite recent experimental [3] and theoretical [5] advances on the microscopic scale, sources of squeezed light commonly depend yet on optical nonlinearities of macroscopic systems, typically crystals or atomic vapors [4]. Here, we present our recent proposal [6] for creating squeezed light at the nanoscale from a single quantum emitter mediated by a nanostructure.

© 2015 IEEE