Conditional π-Phase Shift of Single-Photon-Level Pulses at Room Temperature

The development of useful photon-photon interactions can trigger numerous breakthroughs in quantum information science, however, this has remained a considerable challenge spanning several decades. Here, we demonstrate the first room-temperature implementation of large phase shifts ($\ensuremath{\approx}\ensuremath{\pi}$) on a single-photon level probe pulse ($1.5\text{ }\text{ }\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{s}$) triggered by a simultaneously propagating few-photon-level signal field. This process is mediated by ${\text{Rb}}^{87}$ vapor in a double-$\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$ atomic configuration. We use homodyne tomography to obtain the quadrature statistics of the phase-shifted quantum fields and perform maximum-likelihood estimation to reconstruct their quantum state in the Fock state basis. For the probe field, we have observed input-output fidelities higher than 90% for phase-shifted output states, and high overlap (over 90%) with a theoretically perfect coherent state. Our noise-free, four-wave-mixing-mediated photon-photon interface is a key milestone toward developing quantum logic and nondemolition photon detection using schemes such as coherent photon conversion.