Optical switching of electron transport in a waveguide-QED system

Abstract

Electron switching in waveguides coupled to a photon cavity is found to be strongly influenced by the photon energy and polarization. Therefore, the charge dynamics in the system is investigated in two different regimes, for off- and on-resonant photon fields. In the off-resonant photon field, the photon energy is smaller than the energy spacing between the first two lowest subbands of the waveguide system, the charge splits between the waveguides implementing a $\sqrt{\rm NOT}$-quantum logic gate action. In the on-resonant photon field, the charge is totally switched from one waveguide to the other due to the appearance of photon replica states of the first subband in the second subband region instigating a quantum-NOT transition.In addition, the importance of the photon polarization to control the charge motion in the waveguide system is demonstrated.The idea of charge switching in electronic circuits may serve to built quantum bits.