Chiral excitation of a single atom by a quantized single-photon pulse in a guided mode of a nanofiber

Abstract

We study the interaction between a single two-level atom and a quantized single-photon probe pulse in a guided mode of a nanofiber. We examine the situation of chiral interaction, where the atom has a dipole rotating in the meridional plane of the nanofiber and the probe pulse is quasilinearly polarized along the radial direction of the atom position in the fiber transverse plane. We show that the atomic excitation probability, the photon transmission flux, and the photon transmission probability depend on the propagation direction of the probe pulse along the fiber axis. In contrast, the reflection flux and the reflection probability do not depend on the propagation direction of the probe pulse. We find that, unlike the atomic excitation probability, the asymmetry parameter for this characteristic does not vary in time and does not depend on the probe pulse shape.