A single-photon transistor using nano-scale surface plasmons

Abstract

It is well known that light quanta (photons) can interact with each other in nonlinear media, much like massive particles do, but in practice these interactions are usually very weak. Here we describe a novel approach to realize strong nonlinear interactions at the single-photon level. Our method makes use of recently demonstrated efficient coupling between individual optical emitters and tightly confined, propagating surface plasmon excitations on conducting nanowires. We show that this system can act as a nonlinear two-photon switch for incident photons propagating along the nanowire, which can be coherently controlled using quantum optical techniques. As a novel application, we discuss how the interaction can be tailored to create a single-photon transistor, where the presence or absence of a single incident photon in a ``gate'' field is sufficient to completely control the propagation of subsequent ``signal'' photons.