Experimental Observation of a Photon Bouncing Ball

Abstract

An optical analogue of a quantum particle bouncing on a hard surface under the influence of gravity (a quantum bouncer) is experimentally demonstrated using a circularly curved optical waveguide. Spatially resolved tunneling optical microscopy measurements of multiple beam reflections at the waveguide edge clearly show the appearance of wave packet collapses and revivals (either integer and fractional), corresponding to the full quantum regime of the quantum bouncer.

Bouncing plasmonic waves in half-parabolic potentials

“…This is due to the ability to directly visualize the wave function of light beams as well as to build up with unprecedented accuracy the optical potentials, thus engineering the dispersion of waves in the system. Important examples constitute the optical demonstration of Bloch oscillations, dynamic localization, relativistic trembling motion of a free Dirac electron, and quantum bouncing ball [1][2][3]. The latter originates from the implementation of a half-linear potential model [4], finding its counterparts in cold atoms [5] and neutron physics [6,7].…”

“…The latter originates from the implementation of a half-linear potential model [4], finding its counterparts in cold atoms [5] and neutron physics [6,7]. The linear potentials, however, are anharmonic leading to fractional revivals, phase collapses, and aperiodic oscillations of the bouncing ball [3,4].…”

Classical simulation of squeezed light in optical waveguide arrays

“…Note that such dynamics will occur for any input, in lattices corresponding to any value of N . Considering the realization in photonic lattices, we can call this regime Bloch oscillations of squeezed light as a generalization of spatial Bloch oscillations in waveguide arrays [4][5][6] or squeezed quantum bouncing ball as a generalization of quantum bouncing ball in photonic lattices [21,22]. In the special case of equal signal and idler photon numbers, when N = 0, the coupling and detuning coefficients in Eqs.…”

Surface plasmon polaritons on curved surfaces

“…This caused a revival in the study on curved-space geometric potentials in recent years. Specifically, the propagation of light beams along thin dielectric curved surfaces was studied theoretically [8][9][10][11][12] and experimentally [13][14][15][16]. However, surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) require no additional dielectric layers, since they are two-dimensional waves that propagate at a metal-dielectric interface, so the definition of the geometric potential is well posed [17].…”

“…The equivalence in the form of Eq. (1) and the paraxial wave equation in curvilinear coordinates [11,16] allows us to find the topological refractive index n of the surface:…”