Photon-arrival detector with a controlled phase flip operation between a photon and a V-type atomic system

We propose a photon-arrival detector (PAD), which detects the arrival of a signal photon and simultaneously projects the signal input state to a single-photon state, with an atom-cavity system. In this proposal, use of a V-type system as the intracavity atom is discussed for implementing the PAD since V-type systems have been widely studied in the field of solid state, enabling us to miniaturize and integrate that implementation. The performance of the proposed PAD is evaluated for a specific method of the detection process. The proposed PAD is capable of repeating the procedure for detecting the arrival of input photons and it has improved the detection probability so that it has a higher quantum efficiency than those of conventional photodetectors. (c) 2009 Optical Society of America