Paper detail

Qubit-photon corner states in all dimensions

A single quantum emitter coupled to a one-dimensional photon field can perfectly trap a photon when placed close to a mirror. This occurs when the interference between the emitted and reflected light is completely destructive, leading to photon confinement between the emitter and the mirror. In higher dimensions, the spread of the light field in all directions hinders interference and, consequently, photon trapping by a single emitter is considered to be impossible. In this work, we show that is not the case by proving that a single emitter can indeed trap light in any dimension. We provide a constructive recipe based on judiciously coupling an emitter to a photonic crystal-like bath with properly designed open boundary conditions. The directional propagation of the photons in such baths enables perfect destructive interference, forming what we denote as \emph{qubit-photon corner states}. We characterize these states in all dimensions, showing that they are robust under fluctuations of the emitter's properties, and persist also in the ultrastrong coupling regime.