Strong photon antibunching of symmetric and antisymmetric modes in weakly nonlinear photonic molecules

Abstract: We study the photon statistics of symmetric and antisymmetric modes in a photonic molecule consisting of two linearly coupled nonlinear cavity modes. Our calculations show that strong photon antibunching of both symmetric and antisymmetric modes can be obtained even when the nonlinearity in the photonic molecule is weak. The strong antibunching effect results from the destructive interference between different paths for two-photon excitation. Moreover, we find that the optimal frequency detunings for strong photon antibunching in the symmetric and antisymmetric modes are linearly dependent on the coupling strength between the cavity modes in the photonic molecule. This implies that the photonic molecules can be used to generate tunable single-photon sources by tuning the values of the coupling strength between the cavity modes with weak nonlinearity.