Controllable single-photon transport between remote coupled-cavity arrays

Abstract: We develop a new approach for controllable single-photon transport between two remote one-dimensional coupled-cavity arrays, used as quantum registers, mediated by an additional one-dimensional coupled-cavity array, acting as a quantum channel. A single two-level atom located inside one cavity of the intermediate channel is used to control the long-range coherent quantum coupling between two remote registers, thereby functioning as a quantum switch. With a time-independent perturbative treatment, we find that the leakage of quantum information can in principle be made arbitrarily small. Furthermore, our method can be extended to realize a quantum router in multi-register quantum networks, where single-photons can be either stored in one of the registers or transported to another on demand. These results are confirmed by numerical simulations.