Efficient all-optical switching using slow light within a hollow fiber

Understand

We demonstrate a fiber-optical switch that is activated at tiny energies corresponding to few hundred optical photons per pulse.

• This is achieved by simultaneously confining both photons and a small laser-cooled ensemble of atoms inside the microscopic hollow core of a single-mode photonic-crystal fiber and using quantum optical techniques for generating slow light propagation and large nonlinear interaction between light beams.