@article{4da91edc35544165a919575a7b485dd7,
title = "Observation of three-photon bound States in a quantum nonlinear medium",
abstract = "Bound States of massive particles, such as nuclei, atoms, or molecules, constitute the bulk of the visible world around us. By contrast, photons typically only interact weakly. We report the observation of traveling three-photon bound States in a quantum nonlinear medium where the interactions between photons are mediated by atomic Rydberg States. Photon correlation and conditional phase measurements reveal the distinct bunching and phase features associated with three-photon and two-photon bound States. Such photonic trimers and dimers possess shape-preserving wave functions that depend on the constituent photon number. The observed bunching and strongly nonlinear optical phase are described by an effective field theory of Rydberg-induced photon-photon interactions. These observations demonstrate the ability to realize and control strongly interacting quantum many-body States of light.",
author = "Liang, {Qi Yu} and Venkatramani, {Aditya V.} and Cantu, {Sergio H.} and Nicholson, {Travis L.} and Gullans, {Michael J.} and Gorshkov, {Alexey V.} and Thompson, {Jeff D.} and Cheng Chin and Lukin, {Mikhail D.} and Vladan Vuleti{\'c}",
note = "Funding Information: We thank O. Firstenberg for help with the early stages of this work and S. Choi for discussions. M.J.G. and A.V.G. thank H. P. B{\"u}chler for many insightful discussions and comments on the theoretical analysis. This work has been supported by the NSF, the NSF Center for Ultracold Atoms, the U.S. Army Research Office (ARO), the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the ARO Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, and a Bush Fellowship. A.V.G. and M.J.G. acknowledge additional support by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory Center for Distributed Quantum Information, the NSF Quantum Information Science program, and the NSF Physics Frontiers Center at the Joint Quantum Institute. C.C. acknowledges funding support from NSF grant PHY-1511696 and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and the supplementary materials. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.",
year = "2018",
month = feb,
day = "16",
doi = "10.1126/science.aao7293",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "359",
pages = "783--786",
journal = "Science",
issn = "0036-8075",
publisher = "American Association for the Advancement of Science",
number = "6377",
}