Removal of a single photon by adaptive absorption

John Calsamiglia, Stephen M. Barnett, Norbert Lütkenhaus, Kalle-Antti Suominen

Published 2001-06-15Version 1

We present a method to remove, using only linear optics, exactly one photon from a field-mode. This is achieved by putting the system in contact with an absorbing environment which is under continuous monitoring. A feedback mechanism then decouples the system from the environment as soon as the first photon is absorbed. We propose a possible scheme to implement this process and provide the theoretical tools to describe it.