Efficient biphoton generation by a waveguide-coupled single atom

Abstract

A single atom undergoing spontaneous four-wave mixing near a chiral waveguide can efficiently channel an emitted Stokes-anti-Stokes photon pair into two tightly confined waveguide modes, yielding thus enhanced biphoton generation without requiring loss suppression or stringent phase matching. We develop a perturbative treatment, valid for a four-level atomic system under experimentally realistic conditions, to explain physical origins and clarify relevant constraints of such an enhancement determined by the interplay of atomic decay rates toward guided and unguided modes. Besides achieving optimal generation rates equivalent to a cold atomic ensemble hundreds of micrometers long in free space, our biphoton source naturally fulfills key requirements for next-generation on-chip quantum light sources, namely low-loss operation, robustness, compactness, and scalability.