Triply Resonant Photonic Crystal Nanobeam Cavities for Unconditional Photon Blockade

Abstract

The development of many scalable quantum technologies requires single-photon nonlinearity, such as single-photon blockade, in solid-state systems. Recently, it has been shown that single-photon Fock states can, in principle, be unconditionally generated using arbitrarily small intrinsic optical nonlinearities in photonic cavities. We investigate the feasibility of such a scheme in achieving photon blockade in an on-chip silicon photonics platform. We show that a triply resonant nanobeam cavity pumped with three monochromatic lasers could achieve such functionalities with quality factors $\sim 10^7$ and effective mode volumes $\sim 10^{-2} \mu m^3$, for experimentally feasible incident powers. Using quantum optical simulations, we propose an experimental protocol to generate single photons under this scheme. The constraints on the cavity design and experimental conditions are thoroughly explored to determine feasible regimes of operation.