Magnon and photon blockade in a hybrid antiferromagnet-cavity quantum system

We investigate both magnon and photon blockade for an antiferromagnetic insulator coupled to a linearly polarized cavity mode. We focus on the cross-Kerr nonlinearity between the two magnon modes, which can be large in antiferromagnets with a weak easy-axis magnetic anisotropy. By numerically solving the Lindblad master equations, we demonstrate that the resulting bright and dark modes, i.e., system eigenmodes that couple strongly and weakly to photons, respectively, exhibit distinct behaviors. The bright mode exhibits both magnon and photon blockade due to a weak effective nonlinearity, while the dark mode only exhibits magnon blockade for a detuned cavity photon. The blockade efficiency can further be optimized by appropriately tuning the competing interactions in the system. In addition, we show that applying a DC magnetic field, which lifts the degeneracy of antiferromagnetic chiral magnon eigenmodes, destroys the dark mode and leads to an unconventional photon blockade. These findings provide a pathway for generating single magnon and photon states useful for quantum information technology based on the underlying large squeezing of antiferromagnetic magnons.