Progress towards interaction-free all-optical devices

We present an all-optical control device in which coupling a weak control optical field into a high-Q lithium niobate whispering-gallery-mode microcavity decouples it from a signal field due to nonlinear optical interactions. This results in switching and modulation of the signal with low-power control pulses. In the quantum limit, the underlying nonlinear-optical process corresponds to the quantum Zeno blockade. Its "interaction-free" nature effectively alleviates loss and decoherence for the signal waves. This work therefore presents experimental progress towards acquiring large phase shifts with few photons or even at the single-photon level.