Storing single-photons in microcavities arrays

Coupling light to arrays of microcavities is one of the most promising avenues to store/delay classical light pulses [F. Krauss, Nat. Phot. 2, 448-450 (2008)]. However, from the perspective of benefiting quantum communication protocols, the same ideas in principle can be extended down to the single-photon (quantum) level as well. Particularly, for the purposes of entanglement purification and quantum repeaters a reliable storage of single photons is needed. We consider in our work [I. M. Mirza, S. Van Enk, H. Kimble JOSA B, 30,10 (2013)] cavities that are coupled through an optical fiber which is assumed to be forming a Markovian bath. For this study two powerful open quantum system techniques, Input-Output theory for cascaded quantum systems and the Quantum Trajectory approach are used in combination. For the confirmation of photon delays the Time-Dependent Spectrum of such a single photon is obtained. Interestingly this leads to a hole-burning effect showing that only certain frequency components in the single photon wavepackets are stored inside the cavities and hence are delayed in time. Since on-demand production of single photons is not an easy task we include in our description the actual generation of the single photon by assuming a single emitter in one the resonators.