By embedding an atom capable of electromagnetically induced transparency inside an appropriate photonic-crystal microcavity it may become possible to realize an optical nonlinearity that can impart a $\pi$-rad-peak phase shift in response to a single-photon excitation. Such a device, if it operated at high fidelity, would then complete a universal gate set for all-optical quantum computation. It is shown here that the causal, noninstantaneous behavior of any ${\chi }^{\left(3\right)}$ nonlinearity is enough to preclude such a high-fidelity operation. In particular, when a single-photon-sensitive ${\chi }^{\left(3\right)}$ nonlinearity has a response time that is much shorter than the duration of the quantum computer’s single-photon pulses, essentially no overall phase shift is imparted to these pulses by cross-phase modulation. Conversely, when this nonlinearity has a response time that is much longer than this pulse duration a single-photon pulse can induce a $\pi$-rad overall phase shift through cross-phase modulation, but the phase noise injected by the causal, noninstantaneous response function precludes this from being a high-fidelity operation.

• Received 3 February 2006

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.73.062305