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arXiv:1105.4602 · Physical Review Letters

Stationary Inversion of a Two Level System Coupled to an Off-Resonant Cavity with Strong Dissipation

Stephen Hughes, H. J. Carmichael

Published Oct 31, 2011• 34 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We present an off-resonant excitation scheme that realizes pronounced stationary inversion in a two level system. The created inversion exploits a cavity-assisted two-photon resonance to enhance the multiphoton regime of nonlinear cavity QED and survives even in a semiconductor environment, where the cavity decay rate is comparable to the cavity-dot coupling rate. Exciton populations of greater than 0.75 are obtained in the presence of realistic decays and pure dephasing. Quantum trajectory simulations and master equation calculations help elucidate the underlying physics and delineate the limitations of a simplified rate equation model. Experimental signatures of inversion and multiphoton cavity QED are predicted in the fluorescence intensity and second-order correlation function measured as a function of drive power.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.107.193601

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We present an off-resonant excitation scheme that realizes pronounced stationary inversion in a two level system. The created inversion exploits a cavity-assisted two-photon resonance to enhance the multiphoton regime of nonlinear cavity QED and survives even in a semiconductor environment, where the cavity decay rate is comparable to the cavity-dot coupling rate. Exciton populations of greater than 0.75 are obtained in the presence of realistic decays and pure dephasing. Quantum trajectory simulations and master equation calculations help elucidate the underlying physics and delineate the limitations of a simplified rate equation model. Experimental signatures of inversion and multiphoton cavity QED are predicted in the fluorescence intensity and second-order correlation function measured as a function of drive power.
The Jaynes–Cummings (JC) model has been the theoretical workhorse for understanding cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) and for exploring multiphoton effects caused by the quantization of light. Today, it is an indispensable tool used to describe a variety of quantum optical systems, including semiconductor quantum-dot (QD) cavities, atoms in cavities, and superconducting circuits. Unfortunately, dissipation in many cavity-QED systems, especially QD structures, can strongly inhibit any direct spectral features of higher lying photon states and their spectral anharmonicities. In this work, we introduce a strategy to directly access and probe these multiphoton states and show that they can be directly observed even in the presence of a significant amount of dissipation. Our excitation scheme employs off-resonant excitation of a coupled QD cavity system using a nonlinear coherent drive, and the computed fluorescence spectra demonstrate the feasibility of the direct spectroscopic observation of higher rungs of the JC ladder using realistic QD cavity systems.
The photon blockade is a key quantum-nonlinear effect in which the admission of a second photon to a resonator is inhibited, enabling on-demand single-photon emission. Its practical use is limited by the weak intrinsic nonlinearity of most optical platforms. We address this limitation in a coupled-cavity architecture by engineering two-photon dissipation as a control resource rather than a detrimental loss. Within a quantum-master-equation framework, we model single-photon loss, engineered two-photon decay, and pure dephasing, and analyze their joint impact on the steady-state statistics of the driven cavities. We track the zero-delay correlation, photon populations, and detuning/drive dependences under distinct driving schemes (both cavities driven vs. single-cavity drive with. The results show that adding two-photon dissipation (i) suppresses multiphoton occupation and strengthens antibunching, (ii) broadens the operating window in detuning and drive amplitude, and (iii) improves robustness against moderate dephasing and device imperfections. A mechanism analysis attributes these gains to interference between coherent second-order processes and dissipative selection that stabilizes the odd-photon manifold. The study yields design guidelines for realizing stable, cavity-based single-photon sources using dissipation engineering.
We present a master equation approach to study the second-order quantum autocorrelation functions for up to two quantum-dot excitons, coupled to an off-resonant cavity in a semiconductor-single quantum-dot cavity system. For a single coupled off-resonant exciton, we observe unusual oscillatory behavior in the early time dynamics of the cavity autocorrelation function, which leads to decreased antibunching relative to the exciton mode. With a second coupled exciton in the system, we find that the magnitude and the lifetime of these oscillations greatly increases, since the cavity is then able to exchange photons with multiple excitonic resonances. These results demonstrate that for incoherent pumping, the ubiquitous two-level atom model completely breaks down and that multiple excitonic resonances act in concert to spoil the antibunching characteristics of the cavity quasimode. We connect these findings to a series of recent surprising experimental results for single quantum dot-semiconductor cavity systems, including photonic crystal systems and micropillar cavities.
We investigate the power-dependent photoluminescence spectra from a strongly coupled quantum dot-cavity system using a quantum master equation technique that accounts for incoherent pumping, stimulated emission, pure dephasing, and fermion or boson statistics. Analytical spectra at the one-photon correlation level and the numerically exact multiphoton spectra for fermions are presented. Master equation models that neglect stimulated emission processes are shown to lead to unphysical predictions at high powers, such as negative mean photon numbers. We compare to recent experiments on a quantum dot-micropillar cavity system and show that an excellent fit to the data can be obtained by varying only the incoherent pump rates in direct correspondence with the experiments. Our theory and experiments together show convincing evidence for stimulated-emission induced broadening and anharmonic cavity quantum electrodynamics.
The models presented simulate pumping techniques that can be used on modern semiconductor devices which are capable of coupling a quantum dot and cavity mode in order to determine a more efficient method of producing a single-photon emitter while taking into consideration typical parameters which are achievable given today's standards of coupling strength. Cavity quantum electrodynamics are incorporated in the calculations as we compare various pumping schemes for the system that either use on-resonant laser excitation or nonresonant excitation due to a wetting layer. In particular, we look to study how antibunching effects change for each method as the cavity finesse is increased toward the strong coupling regime. Experimentally these studies are equivalent to nonlinear pump-probe measurements, where a strong pump, either resonant or nonresonant, is used to excite the coupled system, and the resulting state is characterized using a weak, resonant probe beam.