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arXiv:1502.04529 · Physical Review A

Nonclassical light from few emitters in a cavity

D. Pagel, Andreas Alvermann, Holger Fehske

Published Apr 9, 2015• 12 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study the characteristics of the light generated by a few emitters in a cavity at strong light-matter coupling. By means of the Glauber ${g}^{(2)}$ function we can identify clearly distinguished parameter regimes with super-Poissonian and sub-Poissonian photon statistics. We establish a relation between the emission characteristics for one and multiple emitters and explain its origin in terms of the photon-dressed emitter states. Cooperative effects lead to the generation of nonclassical light already at reduced light-matter coupling if the number of emitters is increased. Our results are obtained with a full input-output formalism and master equation valid also at strong light-matter coupling. We compare the behavior obtained with and without counterrotating light-matter-interaction terms in the Hamiltonian and find that the generation of nonclassical light is robust against such modifications. Finally, we contrast our findings with the predictions of the quantum optical master equation and find that it fails entirely at predicting regimes with different photon statistics.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.91.043814

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We study the characteristics of the light generated by a few emitters in a cavity at strong light-matter coupling. By means of the Glauber g(2){g}^{(2)}g(2) function we can identify clearly distinguished parameter regimes with super-Poissonian and sub-Poissonian photon statistics. We establish a relation between the emission characteristics for one and multiple emitters and explain its origin in terms of the photon-dressed emitter states. Cooperative effects lead to the generation of nonclassical light already at reduced light-matter coupling if the number of emitters is increased. Our results are obtained with a full input-output formalism and master equation valid also at strong light-matter coupling. We compare the behavior obtained with and without counterrotating light-matter-interaction terms in the Hamiltonian and find that the generation of nonclassical light is robust against such modifications. Finally, we contrast our findings with the predictions of the quantum optical master equation and find that it fails entirely at predicting regimes with different photon statistics.
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Semiconductor microcavities with artificial single-photon emitters have become one of the backbones of semiconductor quantum optics. In many cases, however, technical and physical issues limit the study of optical fields to incoherently excited systems. We analyze the model of an incoherently driven two-level system in a single-mode cavity. The specific structure of the applied master equation yields a recurrence relation for the steady-state values of correlations of the intracavity field and the emitter. We provide boundary conditions that permit a systematic solution which is numerically less demanding than standard methods. The method allows us to directly infer reasonable cutoff conditions from the system parameters. Different cavity systems from previous experiments are analyzed in terms of field correlation functions which can be measured via homodyne correlation measurements. We find that nonclassical correlations occur in systems of moderate quantum-dot--cavity coupling rather than strong coupling. Our boundary conditions also allow us to derive analytical results for the overall quantum state and its higher-order moments. We obtain very good approximations for the full quantum state of the field in terms of the characteristic functions. It turns out that for every physically reasonable set of system parameters, the state of the intracavity field is nonclassical.
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We theoretically investigate the photon statistics in a cavity quantum electrodynamics system of a single quantum dot (QD) coupled to photonic molecule. Our previous work [Wen Zhang et.al, Phys. Rev. A 89, 043832 (2014)] has shown that QD-bimodal cavity system can generate ultrastrongly sub-Poissonian light by regulating the ratio between driving strengths of two cavity modes. Here we study two coupled single-mode nanocavities with a QD coupling to one of them as a photonic molecule system. Statistical character of photon emission is presented by evaluating the zero-delay secondorder correlation function g2(0). When both cavities with/without QD are driven, the sub-Poissonian character can be optimized by regulating the ratio between driving strengths of each cavities. We also present the dependences of other system parameters on the photon statistics. The physical mechanism of both effects is to optimize the combination of super-Poissonian and coherent light which results in sub-Poissonian light generation. As a result g2(0) can be reduced up to several orders of magnitude compared with the QD coupled one-mode-cavity system.
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