Manipulate a single photon as Airy bullet in atom-light interface

Quantum networking plays an incredibly important role in quantum technology. Harnessing the flying qubits, ie, photons, and further manipulating the interface between photons and atom-like platform are the key problems. Cold atomic ensemble is one of the potential atom photon interfaces equipped with long-lived quantum memory and efficient schemes for being the quantum emitter. For long-distance fiber-free communication, propagation-variant wave packets, eg, Airy packet, are generated by simultaneously manipulating their spatial and temporal degrees of freedom. But the Airy-shaped packet has only been achieved in the classical regime and has never been realized in the single-photon quantum realm. Here, we demonstrate for the first time a spatiotemporal photon bullet in the quantum realm by exploiting the slow light effect of cold atomic gases. We show that the Airy wavepacket can be efficient in protecting the propagating mode of a single-photon source. As such, these wave packets can find unique applications in quantum communication and information encoding, single-photon microscopies and non-invasive bioimaging.