Speaker: Alexei Ourjoumtsev, Collège de France, Paris

Title: Quantum engineering of light with an intracavity Rydberg superatom

Abstract:
This seminar will describe the experimental preparation of Wigner-negative free-propagating states of light obtained by mapping the internal state of an intracavity Rydberg superatom onto an optical qubit encoded as a superposition of 0 and 1 photons. This approach allows us to reach a 60% photon generation efficiency in a well-controlled spatio-temporal mode, while maintaining a strong photon antibunching. By changing the qubit rotation angle, we observe an evolution from quadrature squeezing to Wigner negativity. Our experiment sets this new technique as a viable method to deterministically generate highly non-classical photonic resources.